Meet Alex Paik | Artist & Director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid

We had the good fortune of connecting with Alex Paik and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alex, why did you pursue a creative career?
I think being nerdy and pursuing an artistic career go hand in hand. When I was younger I loved diving deep into Western classical music with my fellow “orch-dorks,” as well as sharing and discussing secrets and details about video games. There’s a deep satisfaction that comes from being able to nerd out with others about little things that would go unnoticed to the untrained eye. Those small details can change the entire reading of a work of art. A well-placed brush stroke, a strategically placed note or hidden melody in the bass line, or even a secret glitch or exploit in a game can open up new worlds for those few folks that are able to read the language. I’ve continued to embrace this innate nerdiness throughout my career and across my varying interests — music, the visual arts, running an arts organization, and even martial arts — because it continues to nourish me intellectually and helps me to find and build a sense of belonging among like-minded people. What I think that all artistic people are doing is creating and exploring possibilities — possibilities for sound, new objects/structures, new ways to organize people, new ways to combine movement.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
There are two main components two my career: my work as an artist, and my work as an arts organizer at Tiger Strikes Asteroid and other various organizations.

My site-responsive, modular wall installations explore the mutability, impermanence and interdependence of forms and structures. Each installation takes one geometric form as its subject made from folded hand-colored paper. These units are then layered and hung on the wall, creating an ephemeral installation that is improvised each time it is shown. They explore the possibility for forms to interact with, relate to, and change each other while collectively dissolving, reconfiguring, and imagining new structures.

The geometry is a structure for building relationships, creating surprising and new groupings as they bleed into and interact with their neighboring units both through form and color. The final installations are site-responsive and unique, and their improvised structures stress the infinite interactions within their own infrastructures. Each successive iteration is an opportunity to reveal the new temporary interdependent relationships that are created between material, form, reflected color, and the site itself.

While the relationships in my work are primarily visual and formal, they are also connected to my interests and experience in classical music, martial arts, community building, and racial identity. My work speaks to the potential for us to endlessly recombine and restructure our internal structures and beliefs, as well as the endless possibility for reimagining what the larger structures and institutions that make up our societies could become.

The other main aspect of my life is being the founder and Director of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, an artist-run non profit network of exhibition spaces. We have five locations in the US and have shown over 2000 artists in almost 400 exhibitions/projects. While I am proud of our exhibitions, I have realized that what I am most proud of is that we have been able to use our platform to build the community and the art world that we want to see.

I’ve learned a lot about the art world and myself from running TSA over the past 13 years. We started TSA mainly at the time as a way to create a space for ourselves at the table but over the years as I’ve become more and more disillusioned with the mainstream art world I’ve realized that perhaps that table is not worth sitting at and it is instead more interesting to create our own table and to find and support like-minded people that are creating their own alternative tables. Over the past several years I’ve been thinking about Tiger Strikes Asteroid and projects like TSA as a structure for artists to build relationships – or a platform for possibility. I know that a lot of my close friendships and almost every professional opportunity have been either directly or at least indirectly influenced by my work at TSA. Artist-run spaces have allowed me to create a sense of belonging and context for both myself and for my work.

The past several years have clarified for me that the core of TSA is not necessarily the exhibitions or projects themselves, but rather it is giving artists the agency and resources to dream up and organize these exhibitions/projects, giving artists the agency to create and maintain their local and network-wide communities, and finally to collectively having the agency to create the community that we want to belong to.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Well I just moved to LA so there’s still a lot for me to discover!

I love all the food options here so most of my trip would revolve around eating 🙂 Koreatown for some good Korean food (although there is also some great Korean food in La Crescenta, where I live!), sushi at Morihiro or Kogane, soup dumplings at Din Tai Fung, ice cream at Big Softee or Magpies.

I enjoy going to any of the state beaches and there are some beautiful hikes in Malibu with great views of the ocean. When the tide is low I love to go tide-pooling at Abalone Cove State Park in Rancho Palos Verdes.

There’s always an interesting show up somewhere in LA, too. Some of my favorite galleries so far are Commonwealth & Council, Make Room LA, and Parrasch Heijnen but there are so many that I am still discovering.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many! I think first of all I’d have to give a shoutout to my wife, Lisa, who has been so supportive of all of my pursuits. I really could not do anything I do without her. All of the past and current members of Tiger Strikes Asteroid have been inspiring to work with, especially those that have served as co-directors over the years — their generosity towards other artists continue to amaze me. I have so many friends that I also consider mentors: Naomi Kawanishi Reis, Danielle Wu, Arlan Huang, just to name a few. And I’m indebted to the work of groups like Godzilla and writers/thinkers like Anne Anlin Cheng, Legacy Russell, and bell hooks, for providing frameworks and language to understand my place in the world.

Website: www.alexpaik.com

Instagram: @alexpaik

Other: www.tigerstrikesasteroid.com, www.correspondencearchive.com

Image Credits
b/w portraits by Jen Maler