" There is nothing more difficult to achieve than a passionate, sincere, quiet faith. "
-Andrey Tarkovsky, Time within Time, Faber and Faber. 1982, P.193
-Andrey Tarkovsky, Time within Time, Faber and Faber. 1982, P.193
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“This body of work represents Shizico Yi’s exploration of how landscapes and Impressionism can be reimagined for the modern age. It’s a conversation through visual elements, medium, and the seasonal light, each reflecting its fleeting essence.
The various subjects serve as springboards only for her to launch an investigation with the act of seeing, the interplay of the visual, the moment, and the human intervention of observation.” --- GSY Studio Gallery, winter 2024. |
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In Her Own Words:
Each exhibition, for me, is like a music album. Just as it is essential to listen to an album in its entirety where each piece of the music finds its place; how it breathes in relation to the story-telling of the album as a whole; so too it is important to experience these 40 works together in this exhibition. Nostalgia it’s a show about a journey of “going backs” Going back to drawings, the origin of making marks, to the stark contrast of black and white. Going back to the pleasure of materials and texture, to the feel of clay in hand and the impasto that caresses your vision. Going back to elements, to gold, to day and night, to the dark and light. Going back to colour, to the unapologetically rioting with colours. Going back to conceptual picture-making, to the whitewashing of negative space while embraced by walking the landscape into the positive space. Going back to papers, canvas, and photography, to the medium where I feel at home as a conceptual artist, a painter, a storyteller. Going back to simplicity, to living among the simple things, to the core of being. Going back to the masters, to Tarkovsky, Gerhard Richter, Impressionism, Van Gogh, Monet, and to Hokusai. Through this process, I saturate myself in the atmosphere of nostalgia, let it creeps into my work while pushing the canvas forward with an energy that resists and renews. This exhibition is an attempt toward a fuller circle of dialogue – between myself, the world, the history of art, and what it means to be a contemporary artist. --- Shizico Yi, Dec, 2024 |
* Click each image to read about the name, concept, measurement, materials and full detail.
Nostalgia
Part I
Drawing Time Series
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Landscape Memories
Part II
Summer Bloom Series
The gilded works, meanwhile, are a revelation. Gold leaf and ink collide on canvas, their interplay both austere and opulent. These are paintings that nod to ancient traditions while asserting their contemporary relevance—a delicate balancing act few artists achieve without pretension. |
No matter the genre, timeless music carries the unmistakable fingerprint of its musician and songwriter. It lingers in every passage, shaping the song into something uniquely theirs. This is how I wish to convey my body of work to you, most importantly through thematic exhibitions.
Each show is a visual diary of my art-making, how I see, how I breathe, it’s my existence. And yet,
it is also for you—for the beholder, for those who understand, who get my music, who see my visual lyrical creations.
-- Shizico Yi on Nostalgia
Day and Night
The Rosarian
Late Summer
Part III
Autumn Series
Perhaps the most arresting of Shizico’s creations are the collaged photographs—autumnal walks transformed through the alchemy of gesso and negative space. These pieces elevate the photograph into the realm of painting, creating a conversation between memory and manipulation, between the seen and the imagined. |
Part IV
Nostalgia
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" ...don't think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It's quiet, but down there, roots are riotous."
---Rumi (1207-1273)
---Rumi (1207-1273)
Shop Nostalgia Collection
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Nostalgia-Shizico Yi at the GSY Studio Gallery Review:
Echoes of the Past, Visions of the Present An evocative dialogue between tradition, innovation, and the fleeting beauty of the moment. By Arden Blake (A.K.A. A.L. Vita) Dec 2024, London. One approaches Nostalgia, Shizico Yi’s latest exhibition, with the weight of expectation—forty works created in the span of 2 seasons, a feat that might daunt even the most prolific of artists. Yet, within this expansive collection lies a tapestry of artistic introspection, reverence for tradition, and bold experimentation. Shizico has, in this body of work, drawn from a deep well of inspiration: her garden, her walks through the landscapes of autumn, and the persistent hum of heritage and memory. The ink drawings, sparse yet deliberate, conjure an aesthetic resonance akin to Japanese calligraphy—each line a meditation on presence and absence. They do not merely depict; they evoke. The oil paintings, executed en plein air, speak to a different urgency—a need to capture fleeting light, to ground oneself in the soil of the moment. These works anchor Nostalgia in the tangible, bridging the ephemeral with the eternal. Perhaps the most arresting of Shizico’s creations are the collaged photographs—autumnal walks transformed through the alchemy of gesso and negative space. These pieces elevate the photograph into the realm of painting, creating a conversation between memory and manipulation, between the seen and the imagined. The gilded works, meanwhile, are a revelation. Gold leaf and ink collide on canvas, their interplay both austere and opulent. These are paintings that nod to ancient traditions while asserting their contemporary relevance—a delicate balancing act few artists achieve without pretension. This exhibition invites us into a deeply personal, yet profoundly universal dialogue with Yi's work: the past and present entwined, the moment both remembered and reimagined. One leaves the exhibition with the distinct feeling that this is not merely a body of work, but an unfolding—an artist stepping ever closer to her creative truth. Arden Blake (A.K.A. A.L. Vita) is a collaborative writers' studio supporting independent artists across the UK. For critique, research, book reading, writing workshop and publishing, please get in touch with us. |
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