Modern Ancient
Shizico Yi,​UK. 2025

Travelled in London underground,
packed between crowds, scents and sound,
between adverts and leftover rain on old memories.
An ancient soul in modern time
sculpts ancient colours in modern forms,
sings ancient notes in modern songs;
an ancient woman trips in a modern world.

Oh my artists, my heroes, lover and dog,
you died, but your art cut through time;
lives beyond cultures, languages, beyond borderlines. 
Let me paint thee, your colours, 
shower me with ancient whispers.

Oh-marry me, take my life.
With these canvases I signed my decree:
to love, to kindness,
to ugly truths and the eternal beauty.  
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Modern Ancient is a solo exhibition composed in Five movements — a work that unfolds beyond the conventional format of an exhibition. Through this curatorial project, Shizu weaves textures, colours, forms, and styles into visual musical notes on humanity, beauty, grief, aging, and the essence of being human.

Over the past twelve months, Shizico has developed branches of projects, each serving as a movement — a form or style akin to a passage in a classical music composition. Shizu references each series of artwork on the history of arts, ranging from Japanese Woodblock print, golden joinery Kintsugi 金継ぎ, to Impressionism, from  Monet, Van Gogh to Matisse.

Together, these projects situate the collection within a broader cultural and historical backdrop, tracing its lineage to the great artists who came before, those who paved the way for us.
With this foundation, Modern Ancient embraces a new sense of modern-day freedom — Shizu takes this concept as an invitation to explore how the ancient and the contemporary coexist, converse, and ultimately, she continues to reinvent and gives birth to new works.
---GSY x 1stDibs, Curatorial Team, led by Grace B. Black. 2025

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Modern Ancient
by Shizico Yi

Click pictures for details of artwork: name, measurement, materials, concept and availability.
​( Artworks not on offer are in Private Collections, GSY Gallery Collection and Shizico Yi Archive )

First Movement​
​
​Genesis

Magic Bells and June Roses -in Chen & Lin Collection, Taiwan.
​Click the picture for these 2 as Diptych Golden Sunlit Limited Editions on offer. 

Jardin d'Hiver Series
​( left to right, in Private Collections, L. Roberts Collection, UK. , ​K. Devereux Collection, USA. )

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2nd Movement

Sunset Song

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3rd Movement

​Sisters

​Mother Tree
by Shizico Yi

Every day, I come to lay my palms on your wise, wide trunk --
all one hundred and thirty rings of it.
 
I talk to you in thoughts,
words started like:
Mother tree, teach me.
Teach me to stand rooted in the core of the earth,
give me your branches, like hundreds of ears listening from the sky,
take me to see with a silent heart.
Teach me to listen.
 
I could hear so clear the sounds of the city,
birds, wind chimes, the engines on the high street.
Carried me through my veins,
from my ears to palms,
to your trunk then to the tips of your branches;
lift me into your panorama.
I hear what you hear.
I feel your heartbeat.
Like an old friend,
I know you, a wise soul, sister.
 
You have seen one hundred and thirty years
of people, horses, cars, footsteps, joy, friendship, grief,
lonely men and women walking dogs --
in rain, in summer heat,
  cats straying,
magpies and ravens nesting in your crown,
seagulls laying their chicks;

Octobers into Novembers,
resting each year beneath millions of fallen leaves.
weathered a thousand storms,
endured decades of cruel pollarding,
oh, our stupid, selfish human hands.
And still — here you are,
 just be.
 
For that brief moment each day,
I find the essence of self,
I rest with you,
​the essence of being.
 
I thought I knew trees.
But after loving you, Mother tree,
for the first time I understand:
the connection between us and a tree
is something so sacred --
as ancient as time itself.

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4th Movement

​to Make a Garden...

Mother Tree and to Make a Garden, explore the profound, often invisible relationship between humans and the natural world. In these two movements, Shizico reflects on her daily ritual of standing with a 130-year-old lime trees, listening through touch, breath, and memory.
This poem and paintings invite audiences to consider the nature, trees and flowers, as a witness to time — to generations, seasons, storms, and urban life — and as a living archive of human presence.
​
Through this intimate exchange between Shizu, plein air paintings and her poems-her artwork reveals a connection that feels ancient, almost ceremonial: a reminder that our sense of being is strengthened through our bonds with the nature world. Her poems offer a moment of stillness in the exhibition, a space where visitors can sense continuity, resilience, and the quiet wisdom carried within all living things through Shizu' s paintings and words. 
​-Grace B. Black. GSY x 1stDibs , 2025

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5th Movement

Le Bleu

Constable’s Clouds, Van Gogh’s Blue
by Shizico Yi
 
Trafalgar Square, London,
WC2N 5DN.
If I die and cannot find you,
please come to meet me there.
 
We once asked each other:
If you could keep one painting from the gallery,
which would it be?
  
You stood for minutes,
left without an answer.
“Too hard,” you said. “There are too many.”
 
Mine was easy — in a heartbeat,
Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus.
I would take her, any day.
 
Like many things in life,
you found it hard to decide --
too many this and too many that.
 
And like many things in life,
I always want the one thing:
focused, fixated, obsessed.
 
The year after you were gone,
I knew I had to bring myself to WC2N 5DN.
One of those days after days in bed
when only being there might save me from drowning.
 
I found stillness in Olafur Eliasson’s yellow room.
I found answers in Constable’s clouds.
I found love in Van Gogh’s blue.
 
I found you next to my shoulder.
 
We walked to my Venus.
She is as beautiful and young
as the day I first fell in love with you.
Time does nothing to her --
and yet, you are gone.
 
Too bad I will never know
which painting you loved the most.
 
So come here to meet me,
if ever we cannot find each other.

-das Ende-

​Le Bleu begins with a journey into memory, colour, and the enduring presence of art. This chapter reflects on the National Gallery as a site of pilgrimage — a place where personal grief meets the unchanging faces of masterpieces.
​Through references to Constable, Velázquez, Van Gogh, and Olafur Eliasson, Shizico traces how different shades of blue, yellow, and cloud-light become emotional anchors in the aftermath of loss.
Here, blue is not simply a colour of melancholy; it is a connective force. It carries the intimacy of shared questions, the silence of an unanswered choice, and the search for a lost beloved in the presence of timeless works. The art becomes a companion, a witness, and a way back to oneself.

Le Bleu invites visitors to consider how museums — and the artworks within them — hold the echoes of our private stories.
With this exhibition, Shizu is asking: What remains unchanged when everything else has vanished? what is the lasting legacy of oneself? What is the essence of living? 
She has built spaces between paintings, memory and love, a space of their quiet dialogue, waiting for us to return. 
-Grace B. Black, GSY x 1StDibs. 2025

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Commission for 2026 are now available, 
contact trough  [email protected]
​Just a brief and your deadline, we will do the rest. 

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