Jinny Yu: Hidden Variables

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.