Pae White on Beauty and the Power of Art

Pae White’s monumental hanging piece, "Noisy Blushes" is a gift to the City of San José and a beacon of light offering a moment of reverie to all who see it. Watch artist Pae White talk about what art and beauty mean to her and in her art, particularly in the period of Covid-19.

Commissioned to usher in the next 50 years of creative impact at SJMA, Pae White’s "Noisy Blushes" soars within the Museum’s thirty-foot high atrium and transforms its entrance into an experiential passageway, delivering a sublime experience for visitors. Approximately 14 x 14 x 11 feet and suspended above the viewer, "Noisy Blushes" is one of the artist’s largest hanging pieces and her most colorful completed to date. The sculpture comprises 68 colors and a design that fluctuates with the time of day, the seasons, and as the viewer changes their vantage point. This site-specific work is the most ambitious commission in SJMA’s history.

Pae White (b. 1963, Los Angeles) lives and works in Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include: The San José Museum of Art (2019); Saarland Museum, Saarbrucken, Germany (2017); Fondazione Cini, Venice (2017); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2015); Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst / Gegenwartskunst, Wien (2013); Langen Foundation, Neuss, Düsseldorf (2013); South London Gallery, London (2013); Site Santa Fe (2011) and The Power Plant, Toronto (2011). Additionally, her work has been included in significant exhibitions such as the Whitney Biennial, the Venice Biennale, and Skulpture Projekte Münster 07, Münster, Germany. White has created major public art works for the Oslo Opera House, Norway; Collaborative Life Science Building, Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles Metro Rapid, North Embarcadero, San Diego; Beverly Center, Los Angeles; Los Angeles International Airport; and Berlin Brandenburg Airport, Berlin.

Pae White
I think beauty is incredibly important in my work because sometimes that's all you can really hope for in that maybe a moment of reverie or transcendence is the best thing one can offer a viewer. If it's something extraordinary or as yet to ever have been seen, it's presenting some kind of magic.

Rory Padeken
We were thinking about the space, the atrium. It's in a prominent location in the Museum. It's also sited between both the historic wing and the Museum's modern edition. And so we needed an artist that was both considerate about the site, about the architecture, thinking about having something suspended.

S. Sayre Batton
In the year of celebrating women artists in the 50th anniversary, Pae White emerged as the artist most experienced to realize such a bold ambition.

Padeken
She's created these hanging pieces before. She's constantly innovating with her materials, with her subject matter. She works with craftsmen and artisans, fabricators from around the world, and it's very much how Silicon Valley works today.

Batton
The commission is the most ambitious in the Museum's 50-year history. It's visible in the lobby atrium through the glass facade, whether we are open or not. So it's truly a public work of art.

Padeken
Also, it honors the things that we do really well here, thinking about the education programs that we have. And so now school children can come in and think not just about art and art history, but ideas and subject matter related to math, to geometry. The hexagon structures this work. You can also think about computer software. A custom software was used to design this piece, and so all of these things kind of tumble in to the artwork that you experience at the Museum.

White
This project moving forward has been hugely important to me because it has overlapped with the COVID virus. And I have had some projects be put on pause indefinitely, and it's been sort of psychically reassuring that people are still interested in art. When there's so much uncertainty about the future, it's reaffirming for me as an artist.

S. Sayre Batton:
The commission was supported by a groundswell of supporters of the Museum. Realizing a work this joyous and animated in the fraught COVID-19 pandemic is truly an achievement. We are so happy to be able to give this gift to the public and display the way in which we believe artists are innovators and problem solvers.

White
And I think it sets an example for other institutions that artwork can still happen, that the world doesn't have to be put on hold and art is important.

Pae White, "Noisy Blushes," 2020. Ink, cable, and electroplated and polished stainless steel; 167 x 166 x 132 inches; 12,000 disks; 504 strands. Commissioned by the San José Museum of Art, in honor of its 50th anniversary.

Learn more at https://sjmusart.org/exhibition/pae-w...

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