June Yun was born in China. She lived and studied fine art in the U.K. and received her Master of Fine Arts Degree from University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Since 2002, she has been living and working in Vancouver as a full-time artist. Yun’s work has been exhibited internationally, including solo shows in the U.K., France, China, in venues such as Himalaya Art Museum in Shanghai and Richmond Art Gallery, Banff Centre and Lipont Gallery in Canada. She participated in The Radius Mural and Big Prints public art projects in Vancouver and received several art awards from Europe, Canada and China.
云媛曾就读于安徽师范大学美术系，中央美术学院和英国纽卡斯尔大学，并曾执教于安徽安庆大学美术系和澳门理工大学以及加拿大艾米丽·卡尔艺术大学。她曾在中国、加拿大、英国以及法国举办个展，并参加多个双人展以及联展。参展艺术机构包括加拿大列治文美术馆，Lipont Gallery, 卑诗大学亚洲馆，温哥华Center A, 阿尔伯塔省Banff Centre，法国Galerie Du Tableau，英国东方博物馆（Oriental Museum), 美国华盛顿艺术中心，中国上海喜玛拉雅美术馆等等。与此同时，云媛还参与了温哥华市中心Fire Hall Art Centre的大型壁画项目以及在印度、加拿大和中国的艺术家驻留项目。
UNDERTONES OF GREEN
“Your mind is like a beautiful pool of water reflecting the world around it.” – Hugh Kidd
Although art is her passion and painting is her meditation, June Yun considers herself a mixed media artist. Besides painting and drawing, she works with printmaking, video and installation.
During the past decade, water and clouds are the other predominant subjects of her art. She uses them as metaphors conveying aesthetics of her Chinese background: simplicity, tranquility, and solitary. Oriental people’s perception and admiration of water have informed the wisdom of the East. That is also why traditional Chinese art assumed ink and water as the medium and the language of landscape paintings. The mercurial forms of water and its reflections build a dreamlike mirage on June Yun’s canvases. Floating clouds are another form of water. They seem vague, unreachable, ethereal and even intangible for some humans, yet June Yun can transcribe her fleeing memories through the water, clouds and mist in her art.
In the springtime of 2019, June Yun started a new series of paintings called Undertones of Green that extends the subject from water to the ubiquitous tender green that is reflected in water. “The greenness of Vancouver in springtime filled my world. Breezes rippled on the glistening water; fresh flower buds were almost ready to become bloom. Spring was in the wind, in the trees, on the ground, filled my lungs, ran through my hair and danced in my dreams, and then the paintings came into being naturally.” This series of paintings straddle the line between abstraction and representation. They not only capture the realistic side of the ambiance of spring season, but also colour June Yun’s reverie, be it reality or dream.
Spring Series 2021
With brilliant colours, the lonely and poetic life has continued through two consecutive spring seasons. Time flies, like a dream, yet the flowers are still blooming quietly. Because of the epidemic, the world seemed to have pressed the pause button, and it seemed that the sudden braking awoke me from the gray-blue “water” (Water that has been the subject of my painting for nearly ten years.) I began to see and respond to flowers, pink, purple, and yellow colours. Maybe flowers are not what they seem. I am painting quietly as usual, but it seems that I really cannot paint anymore, in other words, painting is not the painting as usual anymore. Painting has become less rational and more intuitive, unintentional, and “speechless”. Painting does not require any concepts, meanings, or techniques, but rather just a wordless process. -June Yun, Spring 2021
春日系列 2021
绚丽的色彩和孤寂的诗意，已经两年了。时光荏苒，如梦幻般，花儿依旧绽放着，静悄悄的。因为疫情，这个世界好似按下了暂停键，又好似急刹车把我从很久以来的灰蓝色的“水”（已画了近十年的水了）里‘顿醒’；我开始看到了花，粉色的，紫色的，黄色的……，也许花非花。我安安静静照常画着画，却似乎慢慢明白了我真的不会画画了，或者说画非画。我“无心”也“无语”，画画不需要什么观念，概念和意义，也没有什么技法，就是一个无字。 -云媛2021年春
June Yun is a Vancouver-based Chinese-Canadian artist. Her artwork builds on the edge of Eastern and Western cultures. Through her life and travel experiences from East to West, and then looking back at the East, she transforms her appreciations and struggles into visual forms: oil painting, drawing, video and installation. Those framed thoughts are sublimates of her inside words and passions, made more simple and quiet in their external form. Yun has exhibited internationally since 2000, in China, Europe, North America; received grants and awards nationally and internationally, including Canada Council for the Arts and BC Arts Council for Professional Visual Arts.
The concept of “Poetic Dance of Ink” originated ten years ago from artist June Yun’s idea on an art installation that combines ink, water, dance, music and photography. After years of incubation, this project is now realized with orientalist Dr. Paul Crowe.
This exhibition is the first artwork between June Yun and Paul Crowe in exploring their shared aesthetic and interests: water is their theme, dance is her passion. Daoism is his philosophy; ink painting is the root of her art—dreamy mist is their shared aesthetic. June used herself as a model while Paul used multiple and long exposures to photograph the flow of June’s dance movements. Playing with time and fleeting moments, June’s movements were echoed in the dance of black ink in water, which is once again captured photographically. Through these parallel poetic motions, both sets of images became the materials for June to create a series of twenty new multi-layered images on mylar.
