Ella Gonzales Jinny Yu | The Louvre

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Ella Gonzales Jinny Yu, "The Louvre"

installation view. Courtesy of the Gallery.

Works by Ella Gonzales and Jinny Yu inquire into expansions of painting as a medium and a spatial vessel. Creating visual entry points for memory, sensibility, or a sense of belonging in the context of misplacement, the paintings (or, rather, non-paintings) build on a self-consciousness, developing an ambitious relationship with painterly qualities. The works also transmute into sculptural forms, bleeding into multidimensional representations.

The Louvre, presenting a range works by both artists made between 2008-2022, reflects on physical, architectural spaces with elaborate intentions to re-articulate complex understandings of migration, self-awareness, and the way in which one situates oneself in space or culture. 

If the Louvre is a formal ideal or an extreme example of cultural capital, The Louvre we have here is something that questions one’s existence against the backdrop of what we perceive as established, and negotiates our already fragmented realities.

- Henry Heng Lu

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Ella Gonzales is a Filipina-Canadian artist working between painting and Computer-Aided Design programs, as led by her interest in space making. She has recently shown work with Christie Contemporary, Toronto; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; AXENO7, Gatineau; Hunt Gallery, Toronto; Galerie Nicolas Robert, Toronto; the plumb, Toronto and Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre, Kingston. Gonzales holds a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Guelph.

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. Her project Don't They Ever Stop Migrating? was exhibited at the 56th Venice Biennale. Her work has been shown widely in Canada, Germany, Japan, Italy, Portugal, South Korea, UK and USA. Based in Ottawa and Berlin, she was an artist in residence at La Napoule Art Foundation in France, BoxoPROJECTS in Joshua Tree, KIAC in Dawson City, ISCP in New York, Seoul Museum of Art Nanji Studios, and at the Banff Centre for the Arts, among others. Yu, Professor of Painting at the University of Ottawa, was awarded the Mid-Career Artist Award by Ottawa Arts Council in 2013; Laura Ciruls Painting Award from Ontario Arts Foundation in 2012; and was a finalist for the Pulse Prize New York in 2011 and 2014. A forthcoming solo exhibition will take place at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto in 2024.

Curator tour & discussion: 18 March 2pm