Jinny Yu and Don Andrus: Cadenza

Cadenza is a collaborative artist project. Jinny Yu and Don Andrus agreed upon the starting point, an early, major mural The Brazen Serpent, by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (Italian, 1696-1770), and to work to the original dimensions, 164 x 1365 cm.

The Brazen Serpent, is based on a biblical story of Moses and commissioned for the SS. Cosma e Damiano church in Venice. As a consequence of Napoleon’s invasion of Italy in 1797, and the suppression of the church, the mural was removed and taken to Castelfranco, 40 km away. It was left rolled up until the end of the 19^th century when it was reinstalled at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice, a museum dedicated to Venetian painting from the Byzantine era to the 18^th century.

The why of Tiepolo, and this mural, is different for the two artists. For Jinny Yu—working with oil on aluminium panels and a grisaille (monochromatic) technique—it was the condition of the work, the striations and loss of painting that occurred during its history, that opened up “modern questions.”

Yu wrote:

“I am fascinated by the pictorial tension that is present due to the co-existence of illusional space Tiepolo created and the cracks on the surface of the painting left by years of bad conservation. I “express” these cracks on the surface of my work to emphasize a receding space—to explore the boundary between illusion and reality in painting.”

For Andrus, it was the challenge of working figuratively, and at the same time, understanding and admiring Tiepolo’s contribution as one of the great colourists of the 18^th century. He decided to “extract” twelve heads/portraits from the Tiepolo mural, but based eleven of them on individuals on Prince Edward Island—the twelfth is Jinny Yu. As he also commented on the importance and value in mining art history as if a geological undertaking, thereby revealing something below the surface.

The title Cadenza is apt, a term in music referring to improvisations within a scored piece of music. It was chosen as a reference to their intention in creating their own particular variation on Tiepolo’s mural.

Jinny Yu was born in Seoul, South Korea, and has been an assistant professor at University of Ottawa, Department of Visual Arts, since 2006.

Don Andrus was born in Scotland. From 1976-1999 he was Chair of the Art History Department at Concordia University and a co-founder of The Journal of Canadian Art History, and currently lives on Prince Edward Island.

Cadenza was originated by the Confederation Centre Art Gallery in 2011. Don Andrus acknowledges the support of the Prince Edward Island Council of the Arts for his presentation at the McMaster Museum of Art.

View a short documentary video on the Cadenza exhibition.

List of Works:

Don Andrus (Canadian b. Scotland 1940)
Cadenza, 2010-11
11 panels; fresco and oil stick on Meranti wood panel
Courtesy of the artist

Jinny Yu (Korean b. 1976)
Cadenza, 2010
20 of 22 panels, oil on aluminium
Courtesy of the artist
Promised gift to the Confederation Centre Art Gallery