Lot
35
why does its lock fit my key?
Oil on aluminum, 2018
61 x 61 cm
Estimate
$6 500
why does its lock fit my key? continues Yu’s exploration of the subjectivities of contemporary political discourse through deceptively economical means. The painting, executed in oil on a standard-sized aluminum support, features configurations of triangles and trapezoids in various intensities of black to produce the optical illusion known as axonometry. Yu invokes a history of axonometric painting, from Filippo Brunelleschi to Georges Braque to El Lissitzky to Terence Gower. The reversibility of the picture plane also speaks to a positive/negative logic: can we, Yu asks, view the world from a perspective other than our own?
– Excerpts taken from exhibition review by Godfre Leung on Exhibition Reviews Annual
Biographical note
Jinny Yu’s work grows out of an inquiry into the medium of painting as a means of trying to understand the world around us. A transnational artist, she lives and works on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinàbe Nation and in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include Perpetual Guest (Galerie UQO, Gatineau, 2019), I Like My Countries and My Countries Like Me (Korean Cultural Centre, Ottawa, 2019), and Hôte (Galerie Art Mûr, Montreal, 2020). Her exhibition Don’t They Ever Stop Migrating? was presented at the 56th Venice Biennale. Yu’s work has been shown widely, including exhibitions in Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Portugal, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States.