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Pae White’s Command-Shift-4 at Henry Art Gallery

An installation at the Henry Art Gallery draws a line between art and tech

By Jim Demetre January 4, 2016

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This article originally appeared in the January 2016 issue of Seattle magazine.

Los Angeles artist Pae White’s current installation at the Henry Art Gallery, Command-Shift-4, transforms the spacious lower gallery into a dynamic space where visitors are subject to sudden, disorienting perceptual shifts as they slowly wander through it.

Although the title refers to the Apple computer keyboard shortcut that allows the user to create a screenshot of a selected screen, the show’s materials are actual, not virtual; the installation is composed of woolly fibers, not cold pixels. Individual threads of acrylic yarn, in all the bright colors of the spectrum, are stretched across the gallery en masse, forming fluid geometric prisms that appear to resolve or dissipate, depending upon the visitor’s vantage point.

The work was inspired by White’s online research (during which she often used the screenshot command) and digital re-imaginings of interiors of the original structures at The Sea Ranch, a utopian community built on the coast of northern California in the mid-’60s. 

 

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