Issy Wood

Good Clean Fun
Curated by Michael Xufu Huang and Edel Yuqing Yang
X Museum, Beijing, CN


December 6, 2020 - February 28, 2021
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing

X Museum presents Issy Wood: Good Clean Fun on view from December 6, 2020, through February 28, 2021. As the artist Issy Wood’s first museum exhibition in Asia, Issy Wood: Good Clean Fun configures a pantomime for consumption signage with humor and estrangement, offering a surreal outlook on everyday life. Issy Wood: Good Clean Fun is curated by X Museum director Michael Xufu Huang and assistant curator Edel Yuqing Yang.

Issy Wood: Good Clean Fun showcases the artist’s recent practice which exploits a variety of mediums, ranging from velvet to vintage garments. Many of the artworks uncover how the artist transliterates the visual vocabularies of digital gadgets into figurative paintings and real spaces. Depicting modern ephemera such as porcelain tableware and car interiors, Wood’s works spell out a contemporary negotiation with bodies and objects through subtle composition reminiscent of the Japanese mono-no-aware arenas. Alongside her paintings, the exhibition also presents the artist's texts, music, garment, and tile installations, revealing her myriad inspirations from classical still-life and auction catalogs to Internet pictures. Upon her wide spectrum of practice, Wood’s works often create a phantasmagoric world where the muted objects solicit our contemplations and reflections on the interiority and impermanence of things.

The exhibition Issy Wood: Good Clean Fun unfolds through four galleries the different registers of the artist’s expansive practices, from exclamations of material luster alluding to the Renaissance celebration of artifice, to tile installation reprising contemporary moments of objecthood. Oscillating between glamour and satire, her titles often bear references to the non-sequiturs of social media. The revealing contrast between fetishistic gloss and melancholic undertones cast inanimate objects as expressive agents, probing into the longstanding question of how we understand objects through art.

installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Help yourself (XXL), 2020
oil on linen
94.5 x 71.5 in
240 x 182 cm
Helping yourself 1, 2020
oil on linen
7.5 x 11.5 in
19.5 x 29.5 cm
Helping yourself 2, 2020
oil on linen
11.5 x 8.5 in
29 x 21 cm
Serves you right 2, 2020
oil on linen
55 x 67 in
140 x 170 cm
Helping yourself 5, 2020
oil on linen
16 x 12 in
40 x 30 cm
Help yourself 6, 2020
oil on linen
55.5 x 39.5 in
140.5 x 100 cm
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Excuse me / your life is waiting, 2019
oil on linen
79 x 79 in
200.5 x 200.5 cm
Excuse me / your life is waiting, 2019 (detail)
oil on linen
79 x 79 in
200.5 x 200.5 cm
Serves you right 7, 2020
oil on linen
12 x 16 in
30 x 40 cm
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Help yourself (large), 2020
oil on linen
71.5 x 71 in
181 x 180.5 cm
Helping yourself 4, 2020
oil on linen
16 x 12 in
40 x 30 cm
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Rat, 2020
oil on clothing
dimensions variable
Rat, 2020
oil on clothing
dimensions variable
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Dragon, 2020
oil on clothing
dimensions variable
Dragon, 2020
oil on clothing
dimensions variable
Pig, 2020
oil on clothing
dimensions variable
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Shar-pei! America!, 2020
oil on linen
16 x 12 in
40 x 30 cm
Study for napkin holders, 2020
oil on linen
16 x 12 in
40 x 30 cm
Magnum, 2020
oil on linen
16 x 12 in
40 x 30 cm
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Study for a girly sundial, 2020
oil on linen
12 x 9.5 in
30 x 24 cm
Plunging neckline with animals, 2020
oil on linen
9.5 x 12 in
23.5 x 30 cm
study for tax evasion, 2020
oil on linen
8.5 x 11.5 in
21 x 29.5 cm
Study for Chloe's ideal partner, 2020
oil on linen
9.5 x 12 in
23.5 x 30 cm
A still-fuckable Jane Fonda pumps iron, 2020
oil on linen
16 x 12 in
40 x 30 cm
Too easy (froth), 2020
oil on linen
16 x 12 in
40 x 30 cm
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Chess / car interior, 2020
oil on velvet
55 x 39.5 in
140 x 100.5 cm
Untitled (Trina), 2020
oil on linen
16 x 12 in
40 x 30 cm
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Bond fire, 2020
oil on velvet
71 x 114 in
180.5 x 290 cm
Bond fire, 2020 (detail)
oil on velvet
71 x 114 in
180.5 x 290 cm
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Shopping / car interior, 2020
oil on velvet
55.5 x 39.5 in
140.5 x 100 cm
Shopping / car interior, 2020 (detail)
oil on velvet
55.5 x 39.5 in
140.5 x 100 cm
Trick question / car interior, 2020
oil on velvet
47 x 63 in
120 x 160 cm
installation view, Good Clean Fun, X Museum, Beijing
Now you try, 2020
oil on velvet
39.5 x 39.5 in
100 x 100 cm
Now you try, 2020 (detail)
oil on velvet
39.5 x 39.5 in
100 x 100 cm