JINNY YU
Ottawa 45° 25' 15.16" N, 75° 41' 24.40" W Arts Visual Arts Person
In her work, Jinny Yu attempts simultaneously to scrutinize conventions of painting and to explore new possibilities within the medium. Oscillating between the fields of the abstract painting and the object, her work seeks out aspects of painting beyond the pictorial space: she strives to depict that which is beyond the image and deliberately reveals the gestural aspect of painting as praxis. She frequently paints with oil on aluminum, whose semi-reflective surface comprises a pictorial space. This choice of materials is integral to her artistic practice and conceptual musings; the pictorial space of the aluminum is a material fact, a pre-existing condition of the as yet unpainted surface, and by painting on such a surface, one that is already pictorial, Yu's work begins where painting often ends.
Born in Korea and based in Canada, Jinny Yu has shown widely, including exhibitions at the ISCP Gallery (Brooklyn), Pulse New York (NY), Scope New York (NY), Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation (Venice), the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art (Kyoto), the Conduit Street Gallery, Sotheby's (London, UK), Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), the Taehwa Eco Art Festival (Ulsan City, Republic of Korea), the Confederation Centre Art Gallery (Charlottetown), and McMaster Museum of Art (Hamilton). Yu, who is Associate Professor of Painting at the University of Ottawa, was awarded Laura Ciruls Painting Award from Ontario Arts Foundation in 2012 and was a finalist for the Pulse Prize New York 2011. She has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and le Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Quebec. She is represented by Galerie Art Mur in Montreal.