JINNY YU | Hidden Variables

JINNY YU HIDDEN VARIABLES

November 8th – December 6th

Jinny Yu with her work, Inextricably Ours 23-07, 2023. Art Gallery of Ontario. Artwork © Jinny Yu. Photo: Craig Boyko © AGO.

Born in Seoul, Yu grew up in Montreal and is now based in Ottawa and Berlin. For the past 25 years, she has been using abstract and geometric forms to consider the complex notions of belonging. More recently, she has been investigating the relationship between guest and host from her specific perspective as a Canadian settler-immigrant, living on Indigenous lands.

After a decade of exclusively using black oil paint for her installations as well as her paintings on aluminum and glass, Yu began to introduce colour in her work in 2022. By the following year, she was rendering the works in vivid, overlapping colours that describe distorted forms in space. Yu credits her sudden adoption of colour to two specific events. The first was a gift she received of Beam Paints in an Agnes Martin inspired palette of blues and greys. The second was a residency she completed in the south of France where the Mediterranean light infiltrated the watercolours she made in her studio there.

Hidden Variables is Yu’s first new body of work since her recent exhibitions at the AGO and Guido Molinari Foundation. Her signature ‘cuboid’ subjects seem to fold and protrude in front of us, while her delicate and dynamic brushstrokes both obscure and reveal the aluminum beneath. The relationship between her brushwork, intuitive use of colour and aluminum surfaces, chosen for its ability to reflect light and the world, engages the viewer in an investigation of implied but impossible to pin down spaces. One of Yu’s more unexpected and growing influences is quantum physics where she finds an alignment with visual, societal and conceptual possibilities.

Jinny Yu has exhibited in Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy, Portugal, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the US. She was an artist in residence at La Napoule Art Foundation in France, BoxoPROJECTS in Joshua Tree, the KIAC in Dawson City, ISCP in New York, Seoul Museum of Art Nanji Studios, and at the Banff Centre for the Arts among others. Recent Museum exhibitions include The world is burning and I am painting at the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina; Superposition at the Guido Molinari Foundation, Montreal and at once at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Yu’s exhibition Don’t They Ever Stop Migrating? was presented as part of the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). Yu is currently a Professor of Visual Arts at the University of Ottawa and spends part of the year at her studio in Berlin.

Jinny Yu

Superposition W25-06, Superposition W25-03, Superposition W25-05, 2025 watercolour on paper, triptych 23 1/2 x 21 1/2 in. (each) $ 16,000.00

Jinny Yu

Superposition 25-04, 2025 oil on aluminum 60 x 55 in. $ 22,000.00

Jinny Yu

Superposition 25-03, 2025 oil on aluminum 60 x 55 in. $ 22,000.00

“The labour in the studio is the labour of imagination. Jinny Yu's painting practice is compelling in its subtlety and restraint. Deeply philosophical, her work is poetically political and quietly beautiful. Like all engaged artists, Yu takes from the fullness of the world around her what most resonates with relevance for her, and transforms a gesture, a material, an image, or a thought into an immersive journey into her consciousness, her state of mind. She invites us to walk into her fragments of thought as they reveal themselves piecemeal and all at once - to always slow down and ruminate on contradictions suspended ethereally, not to be resolved but rather absorbed. Her ability to parse fine and poignant distinctions is what reveals her as highly attuned to power dynamics and possessing a sensitive and resonating membrane through which to process and perceive.”

- Georgiana Uhlyarik Fredrik S. Eaton Curator, Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario

Jinny Yu

Superposition W25-09, 2025 watercolour on paper 23 1/2 x 21 1/2 in. $ 6,000.00

Jinny Yu

Jinny Yu

Superposition W25-11, 2025

Superposition W25-10, 2025

watercolour on paper 23 1/2 x 21 1/2 in. $ 6,000.00

watercolour on paper 23 1/2 x 21 1/2 in. $ 6,000.00

Jinny Yu

Inextricably Ours 25-05, 2025 oil on aluminum 60 x 55 in. $ 22,000.00

Jinny Yu

Inextricably Ours 23-10, 2023-2024 oil on aluminum 60 x 55 in. $ 22,000.00