Ehrlich Steinberg is pleased to present Y/N, a two-person exhibition by LA-based artist TJ Shin and London-based artist Abbas Zahedi for the 2025 edition of Condo London. The gallery is hosted by Phillida Reid who is presenting a three-person exhibition by Lea Cetera, Prem Sahib and Edward Thomasson.

Y/N includes separate sculptures by Shin and Zahedi, exploring themes of intertextuality, authorship, and the elusive qualities of language through forms that appear at first familiar. The exhibition takes its title from the fanfiction practice of replacing a protagonist’s name with “Y/N”, an acronym for “your name”, which allows a reader to insert themself into the story.

TJ Shin’s work is inspired by Jorge Luis Borges’ 1939 story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, which examines the discursivity of meaning in identical texts created in different contexts and historical periods. Shin reimagines Borges’ fiction through seminal works from the British literary canon—Jane Austen’s 1813 Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’ 1861 Great Expectations and Virginia Woolf’s 1925 Mrs. Dalloway—which have shaped national and domestic identities from the Victorian to modern eras. Presented as two series of hand-bound artist books, the first offers a verbatim reinterpretation of these classic texts recast through the tradition of historical fiction. The second series, identical in form and language functions as a reinterpretation of the first, further probing the signifying practice of meaning, value, and identity. Visitors are encouraged to handle the work, emphasizing the interactive nature of interpretation.

Abbas Zahedi’s 2020 How To Make A How From A Why? hand towel unit features a hand towel unit imprinted with a lost fragment from the artist’s poem MANNA from below. Employing language that is at once rhetorical, accusatory, and resigned, the sculpture places an unknown first-person narrator opposite an addressed subject. The work’s implicit functionality, like Shin’s, invites engagement both physically and linguistically. The recursive nature of the spinning towel and the cyclical text create an existential loop, where the meaning of language emerges through the dynamic relationship between viewer, artist, and artwork, as amplified by the repetitive act of engagement.

As suggested by the exhibition’s title, Shin and Zahedi implicate the visitor within the daisy-chain of (re) interpretation. For both artists, evolving notions of originality and authorship disrupt established readings within their works and the language they employ.

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TJ Shin (b. 1993; Seoul, KR) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Shin received their BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2015 and their MFA in New Genres from UCLA in 2024. Shin has exhibited at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Queens Museum, Buffalo Institute of Contemporary Arts, Princeton University, Montclair State University Galleries, Doosan Gallery, Knockdown Center, and more. Their writing has been published in Artforum, Active Cultures, the Brooklyn Rail, Mousse Magazine, and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics. They have been invited as artist-in-residence at Princeton University, Indiana University, University at Buffalo, Recess, Wave Hill, Folly Tree Arboretum, Banff Centre, and more. Their works have been reviewed in publications including Artforum, Art in America, ArtPapers, ArtAsiaPacific, C Magazine and The New York Times.

Abbas Zahedi (b. 1984, London, UK) lives and works in London, UK. Zahedi studied medicine at University College London, before completing his MA in Contemporary Photography: Practices and Philosophies at Central Saint Martins, London in 2019. Select solo exhibitions include Holding a Heart in Artifice at Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK (2023); Loading Loading (l’inertie du pratique) at CAPC - Musée d’art contemporain Bordeaux, Bordeaux, FR (2022-23); Metatopia 10013 at Anonymous Gallery, New York, NY (2023); 11 & 1 at Belmacz, London, UK (2021); Ouranophobia SW3 at Chelsea Sorting Office, London, UK (2020-21); How To Make A How From A Why? at South London Gallery, London, UK (2020). Zahedi was the recipient of the 2022 Frieze Artist Award and has artworks in numerous collections including the Tate collection and CAPC Bordeaux.


Installation view. Y/N by TJ Shin and Abbas Zahedi, 2025. Condo with Ehrlich Steinberg hosted by Phillida Reid, London.


Installation view. Y/N by TJ Shin and Abbas Zahedi, 2025. Condo with Ehrlich Steinberg hosted by Phillida Reid, London.


TJ Shin, TJ Shin’s, 2025. Hand-bound artist books, dimensions variable; 8.5 x 5.75 in. (21.5 x 14.5 cm) each.


Detail. TJ Shin, TJ Shin’s, 2025. Hand-bound artist books, dimensions variable; 8.5 x 5.75 in. (21.5 x 14.5 cm) each.


Detail. TJ Shin, TJ Shin’s, 2025. Hand-bound artist books, dimensions variable; 8.5 x 5.75 in. (21.5 x 14.5 cm) each.


Detail. TJ Shin, TJ Shin’s, 2025. Hand-bound artist books, dimensions variable; 8.5 x 5.75 in. (21.5 x 14.5 cm) each.


Detail. TJ Shin, TJ Shin’s, 2025. Hand-bound artist books, dimensions variable; 8.5 x 5.75 in. (21.5 x 14.5 cm) each.


Installation view. Y/N by TJ Shin and Abbas Zahedi, 2025. Condo with Ehrlich Steinberg hosted by Phillida Reid, London.


Installation view. Y/N by TJ Shin and Abbas Zahedi, 2025. Condo with Ehrlich Steinberg hosted by Phillida Reid, London.


Abbas Zahedi, How To Make A How From A Why? hand towel unit, 2020. Plastic, metal, cotton and vinyl print, edition 2/10 + 2 AP, 28.75 x 15.25 x 10.25 in. (73 x 39 x 26 cm).


Abbas Zahedi, How To Make A How From A Why? hand towel unit, 2020. Plastic, metal, cotton and vinyl print, edition 2/10 + 2 AP, 28.75 x 15.25 x 10.25 in. (73 x 39 x 26 cm).


Abbas Zahedi, How To Make A How From A Why? hand towel unit, 2020. Plastic, metal, cotton and vinyl print, edition 2/10 + 2 AP, 28.75 x 15.25 x 10.25 in. (73 x 39 x 26 cm).


Installation view. Y/N by TJ Shin and Abbas Zahedi, 2025. Condo with Ehrlich Steinberg hosted by Phillida Reid, London.


TJ Shin, Unfortunately, only a third inverting the other’s work would be able to exhume and revive those lost Troys..., 2025. Hand-bound artist books, dimensions variable; 8.5 x 5.75 in. (21.5 x 14.5 cm) each.


Detail. TJ Shin, Unfortunately, only a third inverting the other’s work would be able to exhume and revive those lost Troys..., 2025. Hand-bound artist books, dimensions variable; 8.5 x 5.75 in. (21.5 x 14.5 cm) each.


Detail. TJ Shin, Unfortunately, only a third inverting the other’s work would be able to exhume and revive those lost Troys..., 2025. Hand-bound artist books, dimensions variable; 8.5 x 5.75 in. (21.5 x 14.5 cm) each.


Detail. TJ Shin, Unfortunately, only a third inverting the other’s work would be able to exhume and revive those lost Troys..., 2025. Hand-bound artist books, dimensions variable; 8.5 x 5.75 in. (21.5 x 14.5 cm) each.


Detail. TJ Shin, Unfortunately, only a third inverting the other’s work would be able to exhume and revive those lost Troys..., 2025. Hand-bound artist books, dimensions variable; 8.5 x 5.75 in. (21.5 x 14.5 cm) each.

Photos: Benjamin Westoby