PAC Public (a programming division of PAC Art, Houston) is proud to present a monumental sculpture installation by Mel Chin titled Pool of Light at the inaugural Untitled Art fair held from Sept 18–21, 2025 at the George R. Brown Convention Center Hall A3 in Houston, Texas.

Featured in the Special Projects section of the fair, Pool of Light honors the women who worked in administrative “pools” during the 1950s and 1960s. Artist Mel Chin has transformed approximately one hundred mid-century office chairs—collected since the 1980s and bearing visible traces of human use—into a monumental chandelier. Steel supports forged into shorthand symbols declare “we worked,” while the piece draws inspiration from Pat Fender, a longtime secretary whose chair is included in this “chair-delier.” Through this work, Chin elevates the nine-to-five worker and acknowledges countless hours spent laboring under corporate hierarchy.

Presented in collaboration with the artist, Pool of Light has been brought to Untitled Art, Houston by PAC Art and was originally commissioned by Prospect.6 New Orleans with support from Suzanne Deal Booth and Virginia Lebermann.

Mel Chin employs a wide range of approaches, from unique, idiosyncratic objects to operations that require multi-disciplinary, collaborative teamwork. He insists that projects in the public field are dosed with a rigorous pragmatism and an elevated poetic. His studio work is without a signature style, resulting in works suffused with a deeply considered restraint or excess to promote an unpredictable aesthetic.

His Revival Field (1990) pioneered “green remediation,” the use of plants to remove toxic heavy metals from soil. From 1995–1998, he formed the GALA Committee, producing In the Name of the Place, a public art project conducted on U.S. prime-time television. His nationwide initiative Fundred gave tangible form and political value to the voices of 500,000 individuals opposed to the conditions that give rise to childhood lead-poisoning. He founded S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio (2017) to both enlarge the dialogue and realize sustained engagements with community and environment.

In 2014, his ReMatch retrospective curator Miranda Lash described his practice “as a mutative strategy, depending on concepts to derive the materials of its realization, from actions, to films, to objects, as necessary.” In 2018, he presented Unmoored and Wake in Times Square, New York City, creating a visual portal into a future of rising waters, while concurrently holding a 40-year survey exhibition at the Queens Museum, NYC.

He is the recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship (2019), election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2021), and the 12th Hiroshima Art Prize (2024).