Rachel Youn

Bio

Rachel Youn (b. 1994) is an American artist working across sculpture and installation. Youn sources materials with a history of aspiration and failure through online secondhand shopping, rescuing electric massagers from suburban limbo and fastening artificial plants to the machines to create kinetic sculptures that are clumsy, erotic, and absurd. Haunted by their immigrant father’s pursuit of the American Dream, their work identifies with the replica that earnestly desires to be real, and the failed object that simulates care and intimacy. Solo exhibitions include Soy Capitán (Berlin, Germany), Night Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Sargent’s Daughters (New York, NY), HAIR + Nails (Minneapolis, MN), and the Contemporary Art Museum (St. Louis, MO). Youn’s work has been reviewed in ARTnews, Vogue, LA Review of Books, Artillery Magazine, and Elephant, amongst others.