Blindspot Gallery is pleased to present “Yooyun Yang: With Hands”, the South Korean artist’s debut solo exhibition in Hong Kong. With a background in Korean ink wash painting, Yang paints and builds up layers of diluted acrylic on Korean traditional paper, Jangji. Yang’s realist paintings of cropped close-ups of people, places and objects are like disjointed excerpts unveiling fragments of a narrative. Incorporating light and shadow to conjure enigma, Yang’s paintings which stem from found images and personal snapshots evoke jamais vu, turning the mundane into visceral and uncanny tableaus.

“With Hands” presents a new body of work that spotlights labor and its palpable traces in hands and objects. The paintings isolate the hands, heightening a sense of solitude in the menial and repetitive task performed by their owner. Hands are synonymous with manual labor, something that is undervalued and overshadowed in an era governed by digital technology. These paintings are a shift from her earlier works which portray hands with physical wounds, a result of resistance and nonconformity. “With Hands” also features Yang’s paintings of worn and discarded objects which display the vestiges of labor, like things that are outlived and have become redundant.