MEESON PAE

In Seed Memory, Korean American artist Meeson Pae realizes a natural history of organisms that resist familiar classification. Alien in appearance, her painted forms suggest flowers, fungi, and seedpods. Oscillating between representation and abstraction, these organisms inhabit dark, atmospheric landscapes recalling the Romantic and Symbolist traditions of nineteenth-century painting. Rendered with uncanny biological plausibility, Pae’s invented species evoke an ancient intelligence inherent to the natural world.

Produced over the past year, the works in the exhibition were inspired in part by Pae’s visits to Jeju, South Korea, a dramatically scenic island where her family traces its origins. Exploring the island’s volcanic terrain, botanical life, and coastal ecology, Pae collected specimens, documented the landscape, and researched the island’s cultural traditions preserved in historical texts and poetry. The exhibition’s title considers the seed as a vessel of latent potential, containing the genetic information necessary for its development. A source of nourishment and renewal, the seed carries the possibility of future life, its biological instructions preserved across generations.

Alongside the paintings, groupings of sculptures in ceramic, cast metal, and plaster extend Pae’s investigations of organic form into an increasingly tactile material vocabulary. While 3D modeling software and fabrication technologies remain integral to her process, Pae increasingly embraces contingencies of working with the grounded physicality inherent to her materials. Earthy pigments, muted palettes, and the interplay of natural and industrial materials bring the exhibition’s imagined ecology into physical form. Arranged in small constellations, some sculptures rest upon lily-pad-shaped stainless steel platforms, forming miniature islands of imagined life. Across the exhibition, Pae plays with the instability of scale, where microscopic becomes monumental, recalling the immense possibilities contained within the smallest seed.

Meeson Pae (b. 1979, Indianapolis, IN) received her fine art degree from University of California Los Angeles. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States, including K11 Musea, Hong Kong, China; Carl Kostyal, London, UK; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Carpenter Center at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Torrance Art Museum, Torrence, CA; Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA; and Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, CA; among others. Pae has completed numerous public projects and commissions including Le Meridien Hotel, Zhengzhou, China; Royal Caribbean International Ltd, Papenburg, DE; Internet Brands, El Segundo, CA; WebMD, Newark, NJ; Phoenix Biomedical University Office of Arts and Culture, Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission, Los Angeles International Airport, Ontario Airport, Ontario, CA; and Mobile Exhibits Arts Council, Long Beach, CA. Pae’s work has appeared in The New York Times, the Korea Times, the Los Angeles Times, Metal Magazine, New Scientist, Art & Object, and Prestige Hong Kong, among many others. Pae lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.