Gallerist Q&A - Yilei Wang & Ben Wenhou Yu

How did you end up becoming gallerists?

I am trained as a visual designer in Norway, but never worked for an agency or company. When we founded Northing, I was still very much in a student mindset. My Master’s studies in Bergen didn’t just teach me how to design but shaped the way I think. I still apply that design methodology in our projects today. In that sense, you could say I run a gallery as a designer.

I worked as an architect in Norway for twelve years before joining forces with my better half, Yilei, to start Northing. At the time, it felt natural to present contemporary art and design from East Asia as a way of maintaining a meaningful connection to our origins.

In many ways, we entered the art world as outsiders. Yet the art milieu in Norway has been remarkably open and generous. We have had the opportunity to collaborate with many outstanding artists and institutions, from whom we have learned a great deal.

As partners in life and work, how do your skills complement one another in running the gallery?

After moving to Norway, our personalities somehow swapped; Ben became talkative and extroverted, while I, due to the limitations of my language skills, became more introverted.

Ben is more rational and ambitious when it comes to the development of Northing. When encountering an artist’s practice, he is often able to grasp the key ideas quickly—sometimes through just one or two works. This ability is closely related to his linguistic skills: he speaks five languages and reads even more. This gives him a significant advantage when engaging in multicultural exchanges within the art field.

As a result, he does most of the talking and writing. His previous professional experience as an architect is also very helpful, especially in exhibition design and installation. He tends to think more spatially, while my approach is more graphic and visual.

I’m a dreamer and easily become over-ambitious. Yilei always manages to ground my ideas in an elegant way. Visually, I trust her judgement 100%. She does all the graphic design and oversees the visual profile of Northing and our publications down to every single line. She is also a natural decision-maker: realistic, yet sometimes willing to take risks. I really admire her for that.

What motivated you to establish an East Asian art space in Bergen?

When people learn about our focus on East Asian art and culture, they often ask whether there is a large East Asian community in Bergen. There isn’t. And I suppose that’s precisely why we started such an art and culture centre here; to provide access to our original culture, to open a window, a peephole, into something that local audiences would otherwise have little chance to encounter without travelling far.

There is also a personal motivation behind the initiative. We are raising our Asian-looking daughter in Norwegian society; she was actually born in Bergen. We have heard many stories about so-called identity crises among children like her growing up in Western countries. In a way, Northing is a preventative measure. We hope our work can gradually foster a better cultural understanding of East Asia in Norway. We believe that a more open and diverse society benefits both children with multicultural backgrounds and the wider local community.

How do you discover the artists you work with, and what draws you to a particular practice?

Our exhibition programme spans art practices based in Asia and the Nordics with cultural backgrounds in East Asia. Our exhibitions span a broad range of disciplines, crossing fine art, design, literature, crafts, and performance art. In the beginning, we worked mainly with artists within our network, mainly Yilei’s network–she’s good at making friends with artists. We are fortunate to have great artists such as Lin Zhipeng (No.223), Nhozagri, Pixy Liao, Misaki Kawaii as our friends, who later all became highlights of our programme.

We have held several successful group exhibitions based on open calls, two of them for East Asian artists newly graduated in Norway. In recent years, due to social media exposure and our constant international activities, we have also received some attention within international East Asian diasporic artist communities.

We are also not focusing solely on promoting East Asian art in Norway, but rather on actively establishing possibilities for Norwegian artists to connect and collaborate with their counterparts in Asia. Since last year, we have started to extend our exhibition programme in the form of duo exhibitions. The artists will not only show their works side by side, but will also work together over an extended period of time to develop something new.

Alongside the gallery, you run the publishing house Kinakaal Forlag. How does publishing fit into your broader engagement with contemporary art?

Making books is part of my ultimate aspiration to design objects. I have always insisted that we do not produce catalogues for artists. Our aim is for every publication to function as an extension of the artist’s practice. It should retain its role as a vehicle for dissemination, while also serving as a visual interpretation of the key ideas distilled from the artist’s work. We hope our art books can evoke the same emotional impact as an artwork itself.

Artist books have a long history as an important form of artistic expression. From masters like Picasso and Dalí to figures such as John Cage and Yoko Ono in the Fluxus movement, artists have been making books as part of their practice for centuries. These books are not merely containers or tools for disseminating existing artworks, but artworks in their own right.

What do you see as the key differences between collecting artist books and collecting artworks?

Both collecting art books and artworks are ways of collecting a piece of the artist’s soul. But as I see it, the former has a much lower threshold due to price and size. Many people collect art books semi-unconsciously because the boundary between art books and books about art is yet to be clearly defined.

Collecting artworks, however, is definitely a conscious decision. As an art gallery run as a nonprofit organisation, we are still at the very beginning of attending art fairs and working with collectors.

What does the audience and collector base for Northing Space look like today?

Our audience in Bergen is mainly artists, art students, and cultural workers from different institutions. That group itself is demographically diverse, but non-white visitors are still a minority. We have only recently started to have a few institutional and private collectors, and they are mainly local Norwegians. Last year KODE, one of the largest museums in Norway purchased a piece from the solo exhibition of Korean artist Lydia SooJin Park at our space, which marked a milestone for us. We also attend many international art book fairs, both in Asia and Europe, which gives us a large international audience, especially from East Asian countries such as China, Japan, and South Korea.

Looking ahead, what are your ambitions for the coming years? Is there a dream project or collaboration you hope to realise?

Last year we brought Northing Space, Kinakaal Forlag, and Elephanten, our tiny gallery bookshop, together under one umbrella organisation titled Northing – Centre for East Asian Art and Culture. Over the next five years we aim to develop it into an art and cultural centre that truly lives up to this title. As the first and most important component, Northing Space will continue to expand its programme as a unique platform where both established and emerging artists from East Asia can find their way into the art scene and market of Northern Europe. We have already initiated several collaborations that are highly anticipated and will be gradually unveiled in the coming years.