Pae White: Mr. Baci e Abbracci

Opening Thursday 22 May h. 19.00

The works of the Los Angeles based artist Pae White are born from mediated processes that create an idea of artificiality, only to give life to a natural forms: flat color and heterogeneous materials transform themselves in order to appear as an entirely different objects. Pae White’s work is a constant shifting of interpretation and paradox, whereby monumentality appears fragile, clarity is created through abstraction, and organic form is engendered through artifice. For her solo show of new work at francesca kaufmann, Pae White presents a series of real and imagined landscapes.

An installation of plants and leaves invades the space of the gallery and alludes to a tension of material and form, whereby the seemingly natural elements of flowers and leaves are in fact rendered by a hyper-technical canvass and metal material.

The hanging piece titled Suncloud occupies the first space of the gallery. Composed of more than 1,000 threads, the piece attempts to capture the elusive and phenomenological effects of misty sunlight. Multiple points of view are accounted for in this piece-in-the-round. The chromatic modulation, created by colored paper hexagons, imbues the static thread with a sense of motion, transforming the surrounding space into a dialectic of emptiness and presence. Light and color create a monumental, but at the same time, delicate sculpture, a contrast typical in the work of Pae White.

These imagined landscapes continue in a series of paintings titled Around the World in 11-14 minutes. The series of nine paintings attempt to steal and re-package the spirit and energy of the Disneyland’s iconic “It’s a Small World.” The ride, which opened in 1971, features audio-animatronic figures fashioned as multicultural children who sing the title track “It’s a Small World.” In a frenzy of color and peace-mongering song, the complexity of cultural identity and difference is reduced into a series of color splashes, low cost props, and clicking animatronics, all the while reasserting stereotypes and homogeneity.

In these paintings this paradigm of cultural representation, whereby diversity is reduced to commodifiable clichés, is highlighted and reaffirmed through the use of a sign painter who cooly executed the final paintings. Drained of the fervor of the Disney ride, the compositions become tamed stains of color that allude to the ghost of more spirited abstractions.

Pae White
Mr. Baci e Abbracci