John Pai was born in Seoul, Korea in 1937, and immigrated to the United States in 1949. He studied design and sculpture at the Pratt Institute in New York. Since appointed to be a professor there as the youngest person ever, he has been working continuously as a sculptor.

Though there is a clear ethos running through the whole, John Pai's career can be divided into three stages. The first, beginning in the early-to-mid 1960s and lasting into the early 1980s, is dominated by scientific investigation and formal structuralism. Examining nature in order to acquire his own voice, Pai broke things down to basic building blocks and worked with the "irreducible core." In the process, he was able to achieve certain "complete freedom." Such a method of working is reflected directly in the works, in which Pai explored the structural aspects of form by "reducing steel to a mere point in space...and build in any direction, extending the sculpture as line, plane, mass, texture, etc. as needed." The result was a style unique to Pai.
The second stage in Pai's work roughly spans from 1985 to the early 1990s, when the artist arrived at a new recognition of his relationship with nature. In 1984, Pai purchased a 30-acre tract of land near Great Barrington, Massachusetts. The property, which includes meadows, a ranch, a forest, and a beaver pond on the property, reminded the artist of his childhood spent in Ilsan, Korea. The works from this period reflect his encounters with nature. By letting himself become absorbed by the objects, rather than analyzing them, he lets them to speak on his behalf.
The third stage begins around 1996 and lasts to the present. He has been developing a style quite distinct from the previous stages, and the works from this period seem to belong to a completely different artist. Pai explains," I began to work with longer more continuous lines, as if I were drawing in space, bending, crimping and looping at will." Created especially for this exhibition, The Rooster That Became a Tree 2002, is distinct from other works from this period in its scale and style.

John Pai's sculptures are singular structures produced through repetitive acts and possess structural clarity and character like Johann Sebastian Bach's music. Appearing quite complex at first glance, his sculptures are made of the simplest elements undergoing incremental changes. The rhythm and vitality locked in the sculptures suggest forceful movement that exceeds a mere aggregation of their building blocks. The abstract character of Pai's works, in spite of their clear structure, perhaps does not facilitate empathy from the viewer. Nevertheless, Pai's artistic attitude is precisely one of choosing the pitfalls of abstract concepts in the endless labor. Finding abstract concepts lodged in his own unconscious with an increasing intensity, John Pai gives form to contrasting sensibilities, such as balance and imbalance, inwardness and exteriority in his art.