The first comprehensive monograph on the master contemporary Korean
American sculptor, from his seminal wire sculptures to his
never-before-seen early works formed of steel.
John Pai (b. 1937) is a prolific multimedia artist whose handmade
three-dimensional sculptures are, paradoxically, still objects that seem
to exist in a state of movement and transformation. This full-career
survey of Pai's inventive work consists of his rarely seen early work up
to the present.
Pai's incredibly intricate, three-dimensional abstract "drawings in
space" are made of endless lengths of individual steel or copper rods
and textured sheets made from hundreds of rods welded together. Unlike
many contemporary sculptors who draw a sketch and let metalworkers do
the actual construction, Pai continues to do all his work himself―from
choosing the materials to the labor-intensive process of welding and
bending the metals into complex and sometimes massive forms.
Immigrating from Korea to the US at age 11, Pai showed his prodigious
talent for art at a young age. He received a scholarship to attend Pratt
Institute, and in the 1960s, Pai became the youngest professor appointed
to the faculty at Pratt. Leading its fine arts and sculpture programs
for nearly four decades, Pai proved a talented and beloved educator,
nurturing generations of sculptors and fostering the burgeoning Korean
artistic community in New York with those such as his contemporary Nam
June Paik, reflecting a sensibility outside the mainstream of American
art.
