LOS ANGELES — Art moves us emotionally because it transforms abstract, internal emotions into something real, external. Ideas and thoughts become elements that we can see, hear or feel in our hands. It’s exciting when an artistic endeavor takes human interiority more literally – creating works inspired by the muscles of our bodies. In PenetrateMeeson Pae’s first solo exhibition with Anat Egbi gallery, presented as part of the Getty’s art initiative PST: Art and science collidethe artist brings viewers inside to explore the otherworldly alchemy of the human body.
In the main room, six paintings surround two multimedia installations: oil on canvas, flanking structures of resin, steel, ink and glass. In an adjacent room are an additional painting and a two-channel video installation, projected through thin, laser-cut stainless steel tendrils that hang from the ceiling like decorative, reflective streamers, mimicking the vascular cartography of the nervous system.
Structures of organ lookalikes come together in Pae’s work, presenting an almost galactic landscape. Foreign cities of fleshy beige and futuristic chrome manifest themselves on canvas, as sculpture and in the imagination. It’s like you’ve been shrunk to a microscopic size and floating through a human bloodstream (RIP the beloved Magic school bus). Pae achieves this using 3D sculpting software to generate and manipulate videos that emulate our internal systems at work. She isolates an instance in the generated video that conveys a sense of tension, growth, or change, and creates from that lead. This technique results in scenes that seem ripe for movement: spherical, fluid and deliberately mysterious.
All three Pae’s installations Penetrate contain polished stainless steel. The pristine metal offers two things: a reminder of the precision and intense purpose given to the soft tissue of our bodies; and a distorted reflection of our own bodies as we view the exhibition. Her use of stainless steel anchors amid abstract flesh shapes is reminiscent of a reinvented hospital – an operating room without mechanical beeping; supine, dissected bodies without the clinical signs of life.
Pae’s work evokes a perspective fueled by wonder and biological curiosity. However, I am aware that her art is influenced by the loss of her brother to non-Hodgkins lymphoma in childhood, and I myself have recently lost a family member. So it is through a lens colored by acute grief that I look Penetrate. It is an investigation into the fascination and betrayal of the human body. How spectacular is it that these metropolises of soft tissue, rigid structures and electric tendrils can function so seamlessly together in a dreamscape of biological harmony? How bad is it that they can tear or get sick and suddenly stop altogether?
It is strange and impressive how Pae reflects back to us the possibilities of our own body. Strange and familiar; clinical and abstract. A safe space to battle the phenomenon of our biological inner workings and the lush worlds they create. It invites you to look beyond the art, under the skin.
Meeson Pae: Penetrate continues at Anat Ebgi (6150 Wilshire Boulevard, Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles) through November 2. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
