Provocative Dialogue: Vancouver Art Gallery’s 1:1 Artists Select
Since June, the Vancouver Art Gallery has been running 1:1 Artists Select, an exciting initiative that juxtaposes two artists’ works.
Running for a month or two each time, 1:1 Artists invites a Vancouver-based artist who is represented in the Gallery’s collection to pick the work of another artist from the Gallery’s over 12,000 works of art. The invited artist puts their own work in conversation with their chosen artist, highlighting common themes and creating synergies. The initiative was conceptualized and begun by Eva Respini, Deputy Director and Director of Curatorial Programs. Previous dialogues have been between Stan Douglas and Lawren Harris, Russna Kaur and Kapwani Kiwanga, and Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill and Skeena Reece.
The latest 1:1 Artists Select runs until January 26, 2025, and is found in the Forecourt (immediately after you enter the ticketed area) of the Gallery. This iteration asked Jin-me Yoon to select a fellow artist. Yoon, born in Seoul, Korea, is a renowned artist who considers questions of movement, identity, and belonging, entangling them with contexts informed by colonialism, capitalism, tourism, and militarism. Yoon interrogates various histories and the politics and ecology of particular places through video, photography, and installation/performance pieces. One of her works became part of the Gallery’s collection in 1995, and she was featured in a solo exhibition there in 2022.
For this exhibition, she selected a work by Robert Rauschenberg, an artist from Texas whose work became a part of the Gallery’s collection in 1967. Over the course of his prolific career, Rauschenberg experimented in photography, sculpture, print-making, painting, and performance. He was concerned with media culture and quotidian objects and images that could be made unfamiliar and provocative through his artistic practices.
A visitor entering the Forecourt will be met by the two artists’ works situated across from one another. On the right is a work by Rauschenberg titled Publicon - Station 1 (1978). The wall-mounted work draws upon Rauschenberg’s Christian upbringing, combining everyday objects—like a golden paddle, a blue light bulb, and the patterns of vinyl tablecloths—into a shrine-like creation. The bright colours have a pop aesthetic, yet the work feels sacred, commenting on the place of pop media in the 1970s (when this work was made).
Speaking to Rauschenberg’s work are two pieces by Yoon that have been put together for this exhibition. Untitled 10 (Long Time So Long) (2022) is an inkjet print of a photograph of a masked person (like an emoji or a Talchum mask) on Richmond’s Iona jetty. Unseen is the sewage pipe below the jetty. Yoon’s work implicitly references Iona Island as Musqueam territory, part of which the BC Government leased for $1 for the installation and running of the pipe. On the ground in front of the photograph is Yoon’s other work Carrying Fragments (Untunnelling Vision), which consists of a pile of “boulders”—some brightly coloured—blue lighting, and a gold taped hexagonal border around them.
1:1 Artists Select encourages viewers to make their own connections between the two works. That being said, the artists’ pieces show an interplay of bright colours, as well as a shared use of blue light. They also both reimagine the familiar, consider personal histories, as well as spotlight the role of media in filtering experience.
In addition to 1:1 Artists Select, the Vancouver Art Gallery features other exhibitions: Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s (December 13-April 21, 2025), Firelei Báez (until March 16, 2025), an extensive survey of the prolific painter's work thus far; Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch (until February 17, 2025) with over 70 works exploring Niro’s Mohawk identity and experiences; and Emily Carr: A Room of Her Own (until January 5, 2025).
Full information on 1:1 Artists Select and other exhibitions can be found here.