This Brooklyn Exhibition Is a Love Letter to Text-Based Art

"And, Always, Words" at Yi Gallery brings together the works of five artists exploring the potentials of language.

Artnet Gallery Network, January 31, 2022

Anne Katrine Senstad, Liquid Assets (2021). Courtesy of Yi Gallery. Anne Katrine Senstad, Liquid Assets (2021). Courtesy of Yi Gallery.

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What You Need to Know: Founded in 2018, Brooklyn’s Yi Gallery focuses on an eclectic range of emerging artists. The current exhibition, “And, Already, Words,” brings together the work of artists Anne Katrine Senstad, Li Xia, Katherine Duclos, Cecilia Abeid, and Kang Sun Young. It highlights artworks rooted in text and language and includes a range of mediums in neon, ceramics, works on paper, and oil on canvas.

Why We Like It: The gallery calls the exhibition a “love letter to the use of text in visual art.” Language is at the forefront of each of these artists’ practices but used to a variety of ends. New York- and Oslo-based artist Anne Katrine Senstad creates neon-based works that explore the language of commodities, for instance, while artist Katherine Duclos creates ephemeral drawings with breast milk donated to her by mothers, speaking to the ephemerality of the body. Through innovative strategies, each of the artists explores concepts of authoring and recontextualizing language. The exhibition is a wonderful opportunity for first-time collectors with prices beginning at several hundred dollars.

What the Gallery Says: “Formations of language, with their infinite visual and perceptual possibilities, become conceptually and aesthetically striking images that invite diverse interpretations. These personal, political and poetic statements ruminate on consumerism, mass communication, and human connection.”