An Interview with Jinny Yu

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“Jinny Yu: at once,” installation view at Art Gallery of Ontario (photo by Sean Weaver, AGO)

Abstract artist Jinny Yu says at some point in her decades-long practice, she realized paintings are not just something that happen within the four corners of a canvas.

“Painting always interacts with the space it’s in,” she says. “It is never independent of space and place,” whether that space is within the four walls of her studio, or the place she occupies “as a guest” in the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. 

Space and place, guest and host, colonialism and conciliation are themes Yu continuously explores and reflects in Jinny Yu: at once, an exhibition of her bold, geometric abstracts at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), on now through Jan. 5, 2025. 

Goose Lane Editions has published Jinny Yu: at once, a book to accompany the exhibition, with essays by Marie-Eve Beaupré, Patrick Flores, Ming Tiampo and Georgiana Uhlyarik.

Born in South Korea, Yu emigrated to Montreal with her parents at the age of 12 and now lives and works in Ottawa and Berlin. Her studio space in the Vanier neighbourhood of Ottawa’s east end is large, spare and uncluttered with high ceilings and broad expanses of white walls. Clean brushes stand at the ready in big canisters; tubes of paint are carefully stacked on neat worktables. 

“I need space to be not loud, so I can be loud in my head,” she says, even as a cacophony of children’s voices pours through tall windows on a sunny autumn day. It’s a happy sound, but Yu also knows exactly when recess will be over, and those kids will troop back to class. “I like space that is ordered. It allows for spaces in my head to think.” 

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Jinny Yu, “Inextricably Ours W22-05,” 2022, watercolour on paper, 18.9" × 17" (photo by Aylin Abbasi, courtesy of the artist)

At once is Yu’s first solo show at the AGO. It is being hailed as “a luminous return to colour” after the artist spent the previous 12 years working exclusively in shades of black. At the time, Yu says “that seemed natural, because in theory black is the combination of all colours.” Except that Yu’s work is never just about applying paint to paper. 

“During Black Lives Matter, I started to question whether it was still OK for me to paint only in black,” she recalls. “I wanted to think about the socio-political implications of only using black in my work.” 

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Jinny Yu, “at once,” book cover (photo courtesy of Goose Lane Editions)

Then something pivotal to her practice happened when Yu was gifted a small set of watercolours by AGO curator Georgina Uhlyarik. Yu took those paints with her on a month-long residency in the Cote d’Azur in 2022. “The light there is so overpoweringly present that you cannot resist it,” Yu recalls. “I took the blue that was in that set of paints and started to make these small cuboids.”

For Yu, it marked “a letting-go of the restricted way of working.”

For Georgina Uhlyarik, it was serendipitous. She says she had no idea that small gift of paints would ultimately lead to curating a solo show of Yu’s work. 

“I went to her studio and saw one of the first paintings and thought, ‘this is going somewhere’,” Uhlyarik says. 

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Jinny Yu, “Inextricably Ours 23-08,” 2023, oil on aluminum, 60" × 55" (photo by Rémi Thériault, courtesy of the artist)

The show features 22 new abstract paintings on aluminum and works on paper and Uhlyarik says, “they are just so beautiful. You see her thinking through her issues, and I think that is something that is very engaging for people.” 

She also urges gallery-goers to get up close to Yu’s work. 

“From afar they look like the edges are almost hard and defined,” she notes. “But the closer you get, the more you realize that there are layers and layers and layers of application of paint using very small, short brushes. I love to imagine her hand making all of these marks across the aluminium.” 

Yu says the AGO exhibition space itself is very meaningful to her in how her work has been placed “in conversation” with other artists who have influenced or shaped her career. These include her teacher Guido Molinari, Rita Letendre, Riopelle, Kazuo Nakamura and Carl Beam whose daughter, Anong, made that palette of watercolour paints gifted to Yu.

“It’s like this convergence of my forefathers and foremothers,” Yu says. “I feel like I’m carrying the torch for Canadian abstraction. It gives me a sense of responsibility, but also great joy.” ■

Jinny Yu: at once is on now through Jan. 5, 2025 at the Art Gallery of Ontario 

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