Exhibition · Anat Ebgi · New York
NEW YORK—Anat Ebgi is pleased to present new oil paintings and sculptures by Los Angeles-based artist Meeson Pae. The exhibition entitled Seed Memory is Pae’s second solo exhibition at the gallery and first presentation in New York. On view at 372 Broadway from November 6 – December 19. An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 6, from 6-8 pm. In Seed Memory, Korean American artist Meeson Pae realizes a natural history of organisms that resist familiar classification. Alien in appearance, her painted forms suggest flowers, fungi, and seedpods. Oscillating between representation and abstraction, these organisms inhabit dark, atmospheric landscapes recalling the Romantic and Symbolist traditions of nineteenth-century painting. Rendered with uncanny biological plausibility, Pae’s invented species evoke an ancient intelligence inherent to the natural world. Produced over the past year, the works in the exhibition were inspired in part by Pae’s visits to Jeju, South Korea, a dramatically scenic island where her family traces its origins. Exploring the island’s volcanic terrain, botanical life, and coastal ecology, Pae collected specimens, documented the landscape, and researched the island’s cultural traditions preserved in historical texts and poetry. The exhibition’s title considers the seed as a vessel of latent potential, containing the genetic information necessary for its development. A source of nourishment and renewal, the seed carries the possibility of future life, its biological instructions preserved across generations. Alongside the paintings, groupings of sculptures in ceramic, cast metal, and plaster extend Pae’s investigations of organic form into an increasingly tactile material vocabulary. While 3D modeling software and fabrication technologies remain integral to her process, Pae increasingly embraces contingencies of working with the grounded physicality inherent to her materials. Her sculptures incorporate sea salt from Jeju’s historic…