KB News Desk
For Korean American sculptor John Pai, renowned for his metal sculptures featuring grid-like and curved natural shapes, each work possesses a life of its own.
At a press event on Wednesday marking his first exhibition in Korea in 11 years, the artist highlighted the interplay between conscious and subconscious processes in creating art.
“You may do the welding and the shaping, but you may not know consciously why you do it, but maybe somewhere in the near future, as you keep working, things emerge that maybe emerge from your dreams or your subconscious,” the 86-year-old said.
“So when people ask me, ‘Why did you do that?’ I sometimes have to say, ‘I don’t know, but it came out of me.'”
The exhibition “Shared Destiny” at Gallery Hyundai features approximately 40 pieces of artwork, including drawings, paintings and sculptures, spanning from the early 1960s to recent years. This collection offers a comprehensive overview of the artist’s seven-decade-long artistic journey.
Born in Korea in 1937, Pai spent his early childhood in Ilsan, north of Seoul, and in Seoul before moving to the United States in 1949. After studying industrial design and sculpture at New York’s Pratt Institute, he became the school’s youngest professor in 1965, teaching at his alma mater.
For Pai, wires, one of his key materials, represent lines. A line, or even a dot, he said, is the beginning of his art, much like a note in music.
He explained that the movement of the line dictates the direction of a piece. Each movement is closely related to the next, which in turn reflects on the previous one. Everything is interconnected like destiny, as the exhibition’s title suggests.
“Throw the dots somewhere in space, and then place other dots somewhere and let them interact, react to one another. So I become part of the conversation, so I need to learn to listen well,” he said.
The artist said he is drawn to the intersection of ideas, mathematics and natural surroundings, adding topology, a branch of mathematics, particularly intrigued him because it explores “concepts of order and structure.”
“I wanted to see how far can I touch this idea of topological structure,” he elaborated.
Pai likened his artistic process to “a slow earthquake,” where each line shifts “little by little,” and these gradual movements collectively impact the entire piece.
The exhibition opened on Wednesday and will run through Oct. 20. (Yonhap)
