Pae White

In Between the Outside-In

5/5/2009 - 7/18/2009 at New Langton Arts

Foyer: Caroline Thomas In Search of Geography/ "Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy"

OPENING RECEPTION with the Pae White and Caroline Thomas
Tuesday, May 5
Press and members: 6-7pm
Public: 7-10pm

New Langton Arts announces an exhibition of new work and an installation by internationally acclaimed artist Pae White. White's exhibition, In Between the Outside-In, follows from her encounters with the ecology and cultures of the Sierra foothills during her residency at the For-Site Foundation last year. The installation proposes new paradigms for art and landscape - from digital imaging to earthenware ceramics - that challenge the presumption of singularity in much site-specific art, encapsulated in Richard Serra's famous dictum "to remove the work is to destroy the work."

White's practice is known for blurring any boundary that may remain between site and non-site, art and design, and the iconic and the everyday. Using a noninvasive data collection and mapping procedure, three-dimensional scans were taken of an 800 year-old massive oak tree, a wild raspberry bush, and a manzanita grove in the landscape near Nevada City, California. White uses these topographical scans as conceptual source material, working with a Dreamworks animator and visual effects artist to create a series of color-treated, morphing animations. Viewers enter into two trapezoidal chambers in which they are immersed in these images, surrounded by reflected and refracted light. Viewers are thus confronted with living organisms that are at once intimately known and yet untouched.

Collections are inherently embedded in White's work - from the rarefied and artistic to the humble. According to White, collecting and collections are both a way of begetting knowledge and of keeping knowledge at bay. As a material rather than an ethereal element of the installation, White incorporates an extensive, eccentric collection of ceramics drawn from the collection of Nevada City's Joseph Meade. This collection of ceramic vessels embraces anonymous and well-known ceramic artists, thrift store and flea market finds. Unlike the projections, this collection is resolutely physical and tactile. Displayed as a massed field, these earthenware objects deconstruct the relationship of nature to culture.

Langton's exhibition coincides with White's participation in the 2009 Venice Biennial. An expanded installation, In Between the Inside-Out, along with recent other works by Pae White, will be shown at the Mills College Art Museum (Sept 3-Oct 18).

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New Langton Arts

1246 Folsom Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 626-5416

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