March 13 - April 26, The Sunday Painter

Junyi Lu’s body of work for (cossett) at The Sunday Painter is delicate, fleshy, like skin that has pruned in water. The exterior materials that frame the pieces are often durable and dense, sometimes even sharp. It is these soft interiors and their bulky shells that beg a pensive response from the viewer. Do we create exoskeletons to protect our vulnerable innards? Are these spaces safe because they are worn and damaged on the outside? When does the comfortable become the grotesque? There seems to be the sense of entrapment, or perhaps the feeling of a body wading through thick water throughout the gallery; the push against a viscous substance, a barrier that restricts but also protects.

(cossett) exhibits the tensions that perpetually exist within spaces of solace. These environments are a soft place to land, but feelings of disjointedness and displacement seem to trickle through the cracks of the walls that seal the body in. This juxtaposition is succinctly executed by the painter. In (g), Lu paints a holographic canvas of greens, magentas, pinks, and oranges that meet and meld into undulating curves. At the center of the canvas these hues create a hand-like figure, with gelatinous, phalangeal stalks reaching upward. At the base of this form, the pictorial plane is split in two and has been almost imperceptibly stitched back together. At this intersection—this tear—the surrounding frame has also been divided. The structured, even wood at the bottom is disrupted by the thick, bulging black tape that wraps the wood at the top. Whimsical configuration born out of ethereality is confined within the borders of a sturdy frame that has been infected by a parasitic latex. The piece itself is not an imposing one, it is quite small and does not require much wall-space, yet, it embodies Lu’s artistic and personal sensibility in such a quiet, eloquent manner.

The Sunday Painter’s gallery walls appear cement-like, with chalky streaks of grey encompassing visitors. A translucent curtain hangs behind Green Fence, and extends from the large space from the ceiling to the ground floor, concealing the glass window where the gallery faces the street. In certain display walls (the wall where Between Two Times hangs, for example), the exterior surface has been lacerated, revealing wooden beams and tufts of insulation fibers. Once again, the visual and physical display of hard and soft is left bare for the viewer. Where there has been destruction and decay there is simultaneously the furry, delicate, malleable material that lies beneath the surface. (cossett) effectively transports visitors to this strange enclosure of liminality, each work reflecting Lu’s ability to be an artist of both the exterior and the interior, of rigid surfaces and the gently dissolvable substances that dwell beneath.

Junyi Lu: (cossett) is on until the 26th of April at The Sunday Painter in Vauxhall, London.

Junyi Lu: (cossett)

March 13 - April 26, The Sunday Painter

Aileen Murphy: Crackers for Lorelei