Imin Yeh

The Drawer of Extra Sauce, February 2020

Opens: Friday, February 7, 2020. Runs through March 1, 2020.

Press contact: Phillip Scarpone, Phillip.Scarpone@gmail.com

This February, Grizzly Grizzly is pleased to present The Drawer of Extra Sauce, a site-specific installation of sculptures by Imin Yeh. Yeh’s practice exists at the conflux of paper, print, and sculpture. Recently, she has been treasure hunting, although here the label of treasure has a subjective value. Collections of found objects, everyday detritus, and infrastructure embellishments are faithfully, laboriously replicated into paper sculptures. The recurrent material in these projects, paper, is chosen because in transforming from commonplace material into precious art object, it retains the human and bodily investment of time. It is the material of a childhood, a time when you could just make yourself everything that you wanted.

The Drawer of Extra Sauce features hundreds of handmade sculptures built out of paper, often hiding within plain site. Where the original objects all had a utility, whether big or small, Yeh’s 1:1 copy releases these objects from the burden, albeit slight, of having to do something. The intention of these copied objects is not to deceive, but the wish to reproduce out of endearment. Duplication is a way to continue to share the stories behind these coveted objects to new and immediate audiences; and each of these objects does have a story -  of where they were discovered and how they were received as gifts.

Artist Bio:
Imin Yeh is based in Pittsburgh, PA. She is an interdisciplinary and project-based artist working in sculpture, installation, and participatory events. Recent exhibitions include university galleries at Ithaca College and the College of New Jersey, San Jose Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), and at the Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco). She has been an Artist in Residency at Montalvo Art Center (Saratoga, CA), Blue Mountain Center (New York), Sandarbh Artist Workshop (Partapur, India), and at Recology San Francisco. She is a recipient of a Eureka Fellowship from the Fleishhacker Foundation and an Individual Artist Grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Imin Yeh holds a MFA from the California College of Arts.  She is currently an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon University School of Art.

2020 programming is supported by Added Velocity which is administered by Temple Contemporary at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University and funded by the William Penn Foundation.