Meeson Pae was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her fine art degree from University of California Los Angeles. Her solo exhibitions and group exhibitions have been shown internationally throughout Asia and Europe as well as nationally:

K11 Musea (Hong Kong, China)
Anat Ebgi (Los Angeles, US)
Nexx Asia (Taipei, Taiwan)
Carl Kostyál (London, UK)
Woaw Gallery + Sow & Tailor (Hong Kong, China)
Harvard University’s Carpenter Center (Cambridge, US)
Exploratorium Museum (San Francisco, US)
Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, US)
Kala Art Institute (Berkeley, US)
Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, US)

She is a recipient of the James Irvine Foundation’s California New Visions Award, the Durfee Foundation’s ARC award, the Hans G. and Thordis W. Burkhardt Foundation Award, AHL Foundation Award, and the Beverly Alpay Award.

Her public art projects include Le Méridien Hotel (Zhengzhou, China), Royal Caribbean International Ltd (Papenburg, Germany), Internet Brands (El Segundo, CA), WebMD (Newark, NJ), Phoenix Biomedical University Campus (Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture), M&D Properties (Pasadena Arts & Culture Commission), LAX International Airport (Department of Cultural Affairs), Ontario Airport (Department of Cultural Affairs), and Mobile Exhibits (Arts Council for Long Beach). She has been featured in Sculpture Magazine, Art Ltd Magazine, Prestige HK, Theme Magazine, New Scientist, Korea Times, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Vice:The Creators Project, and Hypebeast HypeArt.

I create because I cannot live without creating. It is a constant source of challenge, discovery, and inspiration. For me, it’s a way to process the physical and metaphysical and build connections.

What initially inspired you to focus on painting and sculpting the interiors of the body? 

The concepts I explore in my work are deeply connected to personal experiences that profoundly shaped my life.

My younger brother, Peter, was a self-taught artist from an early age, always lost in daydreams, imagining and sketching. At 15, he was suddenly diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and after about eight months of chemo and treatments, he passed away. It was my first real confrontation with mortality, an experience that deeply altered the course of my life. This defining moment sharpened my awareness of life’s fragile and fleeting nature. 

During my undergraduate years, I was still grappling with his loss, searching for a sense of resolution and understanding. I had a well of emotions that words could not capture. Unable to capture the internal struggle through language, I turned to physical creation. With no prior experience in art, I bought paint and clay and began making. This was my first encounter with art-making, and I began to discover the power of art to transform and transcend.

Interestingly, I wasn’t exposed to or interested in art as a child, but after Peter passed, I started drawing, painting, and sculpting. It was a deeply visceral and organic process—a way for me to understand, reflect on, and meditate on the chaos, order, and mystery of life.

I explore the body and nature through micro and macro scales, creating undefined spaces filled with biomorphic abstractions that invite viewers into a world of soft, fluid, dream-like wonder, blending physical and digital forms. My work compresses different mediums into a hybrid space that opens up ideas of transformation, transmutation, cycles, systems, and otherness. I am captivated by the body’s relationship to internal and external spaces, using biomorphic abstractions to suggest multiple points of connection. Through these explorations, I seek to translate realms where body, nature, and the transcendental intersect.

This upcoming show with Anat Ebgi is special in that it is during Peter’s birthday. It’s still difficult, and I miss him every day, but I feel that in some way, I’m living out his dream, creating meaningful moments and experiences. At least this is my hope.

How does your cultural background impact your work?

As a first-generation of my family born in the US, I’ve often found myself navigating the space between cultures, never feeling fully anchored in either. Growing up in the U.S., I was frequently asked, “Where are you from?”—a question that followed me to South Korea as well. This persistent sense of otherness led me to look inward, turning that question into a deeper exploration of belonging.

My work engages with world-building as a means of creating spaces where identity, culture, and self can fluidly coexist. In these imagined realms, I investigate the tension between belonging and alienation, weaving together organic forms, surreal landscapes, and digital-to-physical processes to construct built environments. My practice becomes a response to the question, “Where are you from?”—not through a fixed location, but through the creation of otherworldly environments where belonging is dynamic, evolving, and self-defined.

What is your creative process for blending representation with abstraction?

The translation process here is less about replicating something specific from one medium to another and more about finding a language within the materials that speaks to both the physical and the metaphorical. They’re translations of internal experiences into external forms, where the materials themselves contribute to the meaning. The ambiguity of forms—whether they remind viewers of something internal, like organs, or external, like machine armature or architectural elements—invites multiple interpretations, which is something I value. It allows the work to live in a space between the familiar and the abstract, encouraging viewers to engage with it on a personal, perhaps even subconscious level.

What influenced you to utilize digital software?

Confronting death at an early age and experiencing the fragility of the body, there was an early understanding of uncontrollable forces. I think I gravitated to and adopted digital software because I was drawn to the ability to control a specific space from the ground up. For example, in the digital realm, you can defy gravity, apply any lighting scenario, and create impossible vantage points. These built environments then are processed through machines which have uncontrollable errors and glitches that leave markings, etching, and memory of process and time. It’s a cycle that reflects our own existence and the poetic beauty in the scars that leave traces of moments in time. And the perfect imperfections engage reality and physicality. This process and traces of the hand are seen in the paintings that are referencing these digital worlds. The hand, the fleshy imperfect human remains and it is the part that can’t be digitally replicated—the consciousness or the soul.

How do 3D modeling software and VR sculpting play an essential role in your work?

In technical terms, the forms are created using 3D sculpting programs that simulate the tactile experience of working with clay. The process begins with primitive shapes—often spheres—which I manipulate to develop the final structure. I find myself repeatedly drawn to the sphere, a universal form that resonates with the fundamental completeness inherent in nature and within ourselves.

The immediacy of digital sculpting, coupled with the limitless potential to “undo” and “redo,” allows me to explore biomorphic forms with multiple iterations. These forms often straddle the line between the ambiguous and the familiar.

Animation plays a crucial role in my work. I animate these forms using a set of parameters and then capture a single frame, freezing a moment in time that becomes the basis for further exploration—whether through painting, sculpture, or other mediums. These forms often convey a sense of tension, as if they are on the brink of bursting, blooming, or transforming. This suspended anticipation captures a fleeting moment before a climax of change or movement. I’m drawn to these pivotal moments due to the tension capturing a state of transformation.

The physical sculptures are realized through resin 3D printing or FDM printing, with each piece built up layer by layer in microns. This additive process echoes the slow, methodical formation of geological structures or the layering of memories.

The malleability and infinite scalability of digital creation allows for a boundless cycle of iteration and transformation, fueling the continuous process of world-building within my practice. Each painting emerges as a tangible artifact from this process, akin to single frames extracted from an expansive animation. These individual frames are fragments of time that are processed into machine learning datasets, serving as the foundation for training diffusion models. Central to this exploration is the use of Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN), a model architecture that influences the efficiency and nuance of the training process. Through these AI-driven iterations, my work becomes a reflection of fractal-like patterns—each generation echoing its origins, yet constantly evolving, offering a new perspective on the endless possibilities within the digital realm which are then translated physically.

The translation of these digital components to physical form in sculpture, painting, and video has to do with the tactile physical experience of being human. We are in physical vessels experiencing our external world. The skin on our fingertips contain the most nerve endings, making them incredibly sensitive to touch and temperature changes. Each fingertip contains approximately 3,000 nerve endings known as Meissner’s corpuscles, specifically designed to detect light touch and vibrations. We are physical beings in a physical world. The physicality grounds us in reality although reality is becoming more blurred.

Which public artwork was your favorite to create and why?

“Gaze,” is a public artwork inspired by the city of Pasadena’s dedication to research in space exploration and highlights the intersection between the vast complexity of the universe and the finite nature of human time and history. This public artwork was created during the pandemic and it was the result of the passion, blood, sweat, and tears of a very dedicated team. It was a bonding experience and I am forever grateful to the team involving Mo Kim, Sonia Yoon, Pharra Kligman, Tiffin Roley, Shawn Greenwood, Carlini Nunez, and Eric Mesple.

Who is somebody currently living that you have the most respect for in the art world?

There are so many influential and inspiring artists it is hard to choose only one. One artist I have immense respect for in the art world is Anicka Yi. Her work pushes the boundaries of sensory experience, blending biology, technology, and art in innovative ways that challenge traditional perceptions of materials and the body.

Is there an institutional collection that would be meaningful for you to be in?

Growing up and living in Los Angeles, being included in LACMA’s collection represents not just a career milestone but, more significantly, a profound connection to the city’s cultural landscape. It places the artist within the evolving historical and contemporary narrative of LA’s vibrant art scene, reflecting a deeper integration into the creative fabric of the city.

Describe what an ideal public or private space would look like for your artwork to reside in.

I believe a public or private space that appreciates the work is an ideal place for the work. At the end of the day, each work is like a precious child I am sending off into the world and it’s important to me that they all find a loving nurturing home.

Which artists would you like to be in a group show with in the future?

I really admire Haegue Yang and Lee Bul. Yang and Bul’s works span a wide range of media and concepts with innovative practices. Yang’s work frequently touches on ideas of migration, cultural hybridity, and diasporic experiences, drawing from her own life as someone who has lived and worked between South Korea and Europe. Her practice is deeply rooted in exploring the relationship between the personal and the political, the individual and the collective. And Bul is a multimedia artist whose work spans performance, sculpture, installation, and drawing exploring the human body, technology, and utopian/dystopian visions of the future. It would be an honor to show with these incredible artists.

Which part of the art ecosystem excites you the most for the future of your practice?

The part of the art ecosystem that excites me most for the future of my practice is the intersection of digital technology and physical experience. The growing possibilities of blending virtual spaces, 3D modeling, and immersive installations with tangible, tactile elements open up endless ways to create new worlds and invite viewers into them. The accessibility of emerging tools and the ability to experiment across mediums—whether it’s through augmented reality, interactive environments, or merging traditional craft with cutting-edge tech—allows for more dynamic and fluid explorations of transformation, fantasy, and otherness.

What excites me is the potential for these hybrid spaces to offer new forms of engagement, where viewers can interact with my work in both physical and virtual realms. As these boundaries dissolve, I see the future of my practice being enriched by this duality, where technology can heighten the organic and vice versa, creating experiences that feel both intimate and transcendent.

Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Meeson Pae: Permeate on view at 6150 Wilshire Blvd from September 21 through November 2. This is Pae’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and presents biomorphic paintings, sculptures, and multimedia installations. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, September 21 from 6-8pm.

Evoking the body and its ongoing relationship to technology, Korean American artist Meeson Pae’s work explores the sensual architecture of organic and mechanical forms. With the assistance of 3D sculpting software, Pae renders her muscular mechanisms and fluid flesh virtually. This process allows her to exploit a limitless potential of scale, gravity, perspective, and to boundlessly ‘undo’ or ‘redo’ her subject matter until she has arrived at a moment of climactic transformation.

This work explores the interplay between machine and body, complicating distinctions through the translation of these digital processes into physical objects. Across media, whether oil painting or sculptures fabricated through industrial processes, such as 3D printing and laser-cut steel, Pae’s work examines how shifting states can alter our perceptions of the abstract and representational, the organic and architectural, the internal and external.

Drawn to the visceral, Pae’s protuberances and cavities, lumps, and spills form mechanical organs creating entangled compositions that function symbiotically. Pae builds worlds that are invisible, fanciful, and futuristic—her objects seem aware of their own fragility oscillating between micro and macro spatiality. In paintings such as Formations or Phase (all works 2024), Pae’s imagery occupies an unfamiliar landscape; the dark strangeness of these settings heightens the alien origins of these processors, atoms, motherboards, or molecules. Across her multifaceted practice, the works speak to a desire for exploration of spaces that extend beyond human understanding.

Pae’s sculptures are constructed of disparate materials including aluminum, stainless steel, resin, glass, halite, and other organic matter. These materials are chosen for their inherent dualities and the contrasts and tensions they activate—such as the rigidity and strength of steel juxtaposed with the softness and malleability of resin. Rounded flesh-like forms begin as abstract ideas, sensations which are given volume, density, and texture, achieving uncanny and metaphorical effects. For example, the sculpture Accretion comprises bulbous forms of opaque resin and shiny steel tripod poles that act as a type of support, alluding to the relationship of bones and muscles which require each other to generate movement.

In the adjacent gallery, Pae has installed a video composed of animated 3D models. The pulsating forms morph through digital processes—revealing the infinite possibilities and iterations her works take before they are realized physically. The videos are projected onto a centrally hanging web of laser-cut stainless steel tendrils. A twisting network of reflective neurons bounce light and cast shadows about the gallery as they gently sway. Equivocal and enigmatic, Permeate dissolves our sense of the internal and the external, together the works suggest something expanding, tangible, and alive as if these objects might mutate and breakaway spontaneously.