Pae White: "Lisa, Bright & Dark"

On view at SMoCA this summer is the first American retrospective of works by Southern California artist Pae White. Entitled by the artist “Lisa, Bright and Dark,” after a novel by John Neufeld written for adolescents that was popular with girls during the artist’s own ‘tween years in the ‘70s, the exhibit fills two rooms at the museum. While “Bright and Dark” brings to mind the searing washed-out days of Southern California contrasted to night, and the noire films of LA’s iconic industry, the movies, thirty years of young readers know Neufeld’s title as a description of the book’s main character’s manic-depression, days of “light” lived in the world followed by “dark” times of seclusion.

Too much can be made of a title, though, especially when, as in this case, it is appended to the show, and not a program or set of instructions for assembling the collection. There are, however, two rooms, a light filled room and a darkened one.

The dark room is on the right, and directly in front of the viewer as you walk through the museum from the front desk. Naturally, this is the first entered. Inside, in the darkened room towers of light, mobiles, actually, of hundreds (thousands?) of colored cut paper discs, squares, flake-shapes, swarm on colored strings.

The light sources are in the ceiling, and the columns of paper flit in the air moved by passersby. Nearby, thirty or forty feet of colored plexiglass form a sort of suspended runway, also top-lit. The acrylic sheets are slabbed together, and in between, what looks like running pools of liquid broken into myriad drops are contrived by plastic solvent that is speckled in between the sheets, occasionally dripping down the edges in frozen strings of glue. Suspended above is a collection of box shaped silvered wire mesh, made by wrapping a pile of cardboard boxes in wire, burning the cardboard, and chroming the metal. Rumored to be a memory of moving day, the matrix of silver filagree over pink and orange plastic would be incredibly difficult to photograph, and in spite of its huge size, seems like a drawing in the air. Flanking the sunrise hued runway and floating chrome on both sides are two large tapestries, woven in Belgium.

Looking through the hanging chrome is what appears to be a long wall of twisted steel. Made as a curtain for a theater, the shiny threads are machine woven to create the blown-up photograph of crumpled foil. The illusion created is as effective in fooling the eye to see dimension in the flat fabric as the transparent hanging boxes are in assuming the appearance of a seemingly flat drawing in the air.

On the other side, another photo tapestry hangs, depicting incense smoke swirling past the curve of a spoon, enlarged countless times. Behind the the hanging fabrics are rows of what at first seem to be simple framed color field prints. Up close, spider webs appear trapped under glass. The cool darkness of the room, its columns of light, the sheer delight of looking, make this room hard to leave.

Pae White has worked in what some consider to be two worlds: the world of design, and the realm of fine art. The next room, extremely bright lit, is filled with tokens of what may be considered her design work: a wall covered with posters for other artists’ exhibitions, magazine covers, and gallery advertisements.

On the floor, vitrines packed with any number of items look like souvenir cases of memorabilia from some misplaced world’s fair or book designers’ convention. It is hard to tell what one is looking at, because this room is filled with tension, and hard to endure for more than a moment. The far wall, jammed with paper, is reflected by its mate opposite the room, almost bare. This is not negative space in a composition, but emptiness. The mostly blank walls feel as if their contents have been ripped down, thrown in the boxes masquerading as museum displays. If this, the world of contracts, is surely the manic side, what comfort and balance is found in the dark.

Step closer, and the mood abruptly changes. Seen individually, the graphic works are joyful, even if the room is oppressive. The uneasy shape of this half of the exhibit seems to urge the viewer to ignore context, forget function, to see the objects for themselves.