For Liste Art Fair 2022, Galerie Noah Klink is pleased to present new works by Canadian artist Alison Yip.
Expanding on the idea of cursed figuration, Yip has built up a body of work calculated to slowly break down over time. Shown are a series of carefully painted still lifes on wood - a typology of healthy salads one might find scrolling through a lifestyle blog. Two collaged ‘monsters’ made up of graphite drawings on paper and felt traverse the space in between. One wears a Fitbit, and both are shown at their limit of emotional capacity while maintaining requisite modes of functionality and self-regulation. Forging a kind of viewership or commentary in relation to the apparently banal salad imagery, they reveal an ambivalence toward the contemporary drive toward self-optimization, and a distraction from the material deterioration that lies beneath.
A mixture of substances normally associated with preservation and longevity is added as a transparent layer over the salads: Wrinkle cream, sunscreen, active collagen, healing earth, vitamins and benzos. This chemically volatile combination will eventually corrode the painted parts of which it covers. The salads rot. Notions of value in the art object are destabilized. The question of value related to longevity re-emerges. Inherent vice, a term familiar in art restoration, is more often used in the world of commerce as a disclaimer over the natural tendency of a changing material in a good. Through their medium and subject matter, the works create an anxious reflection within the context of the fair and those involved.
Alison Yip (b. Calgary, CA) lives and works between Cologne and Berlin, DE. She received a MFA from Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Hamburg, DE. Recent solo exhibitions include Soma Topika, Galerie Noah Klink (Berlin, DE, 2021), which traveled to Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver, CA, 2022); Bare Heel Country, Dortmunder Kunstverein (Dortmund, DE, 2020/21) and I SAW A CROW, ORCA WAS I, Monte Clark Gallery (Vancouver, CA, 2020). Her works has recently been included in group shows including Blue of Noon, Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler (Berlin, DE, 2022); Sleeping In, JUNE (Berlin, DE, 2022) and Fly Robin Fly, Mécènes du Sud (Montpellier-Sète, FR, 2021).
