The Many Colors of Pae White

Brian Butler, who runs the Los Angeles project space 1301PE and who has worked with White for years, sees her method as a means of approaching the infinite and the unknown with a set of “tools” capable of handling whatever issues might arise: “Pae views the world as a place where everything is possible, and in a way she has found very fixed possibilities [her varied techniques], which kind of keep increasing a little bit and which she uses to fit the needs for any given particular time and place.”

It’s a kind of honed fluidity that separates her from so much of what’s passing for art lately: repetitive imagery pounded into our mind’s eyes in the hope that the viewer will at least walk away remembering the brand. “Pae’s willing to disappear into her work,” adds Pagel, “to become what John Baldessari called an artist who was ‘beyond the studio,’ no longer bound to the canvas, but out in the world and responding to situations.”

Like the situation that occurred last year with a show at Richard Telles Fine Art on Beverly. A chandelier White had manufactured in Mexico showed up in a thousand little pieces and without the necessary wiring. For many, it would have been a catastrophe, and White definitely took pause, but, ultimately, she gathered herself and responded, choosing to showcase the chandelier as a luxuriously sprawled mess in the corner of the gallery.

“Pae makes decisions on the spot,” says Richard Telles, recalling the event. “And she has a great capacity for improvisation. The result was wonderful. It [the show] really turned out beautifully. Installation is something that I think is extremely important for artists, and it’s one of her strong points.”

The unknown and/or the unaccountable are often evoked with fondness in conversations with White. When I mention how the hanging pieces at the Hammer had created these wonderful monster-snowflake shadows on the floor and how initially, in fact, it had been the shadows that had drawn me to the piece, the artist breaks into a grin. “Yeah, those shadows were a complete surprise. I hadn’t ever built one of those pieces around a fixed light before, so I had no idea that would happen. It’s a great example of how what appeared initially to be a limitation ended up being a total bonus.”