JINNY YU HIDDENVARIABLES
November 8th – December 6th
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 specifc 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 specifc events. The frst 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 infltrated the watercolours she made in her studio there.
HiddenVariablesis Yu’s frst 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 refect 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 infuences is quantum physics where she fnds 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 Banf Centre for the Arts among others. Recent Museum exhibitions include TheworldisburningandIampaintingat 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’tTheyEverStop 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.
SuperpositionW25-06,SuperpositionW25-03,SuperpositionW25-05, 2025
watercolour on paper, triptych
23 1/2 x 21 1/2 in. (each)
$ 16,000.00
Superposition25-04, 2025 oil on aluminum
60 x 55 in.
$ 22,000.00
Superposition25-03, 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 fne 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
SuperpositionW25-09, 2025
watercolour on paper
23 1/2 x 21 1/2 in.
$ 6,000.00
Jinny Yu
SuperpositionW25-11, 2025
watercolour on paper
23 1/2 x 21 1/2 in.
$ 6,000.00
Jinny Yu
SuperpositionW25-10, 2025
watercolour on paper
23 1/2 x 21 1/2 in.
$ 6,000.00
InextricablyOurs25-05, 2025 oil on aluminum
60 x 55 in.
$ 22,000.00
J inny Yu
InextricablyOurs23-10, 2023-2024 oil on aluminum
60 x 55 in.
$ 22,000.00
