Rachel Youn

Rachel Youn works with kinetic sculpture and installation. The starting point is secondhand wellness equipment – electric massagers, baby rockers, exercise machines – sourced from online marketplaces and reassembled with artificial plants into sculptures in continuous motion. The objects share a common origin: designed to simulate comfort or self-improvement, discarded once they failed to deliver.

Central to the work is a tension between authenticity and artifice – between things that promise transformation and the residue they leave behind. Youn draws connections between disparate rituals of escape and renewal: the infomercial, the car wash, the baptism, the queer dance floor. The sculptures move ceaselessly, serving no one, alongside plants that refuse to decay.

Rachel Youn received their BFA from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and their MFA in Sculpture from Yale University. They are a recipient of the 2020 Great Rivers Biennial Award and have attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center and ACRE.

Their work is on view at the solo exhibition “Unruly Vessel” at Scuola Piccola Zattere in Venice, IT.

Solo shows include: NO SWEAT, G Gallery, Seoul, SK (2025); Pleasure Circuit, Soy Capitán, Berlin, DE (2024); Well Adjusted, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, US (2023); No Pain No Gain, Sargent’s Daughters, New York, US (2022); Revival, Soy Capitán, Berlin, DE (2022); Greener than Grass, Truman State University Art Gallery, Kirksville, US (2022); Underparty, Hair + NAILS, Minneapolis, US (2021); Hothouse, Brick City Gallery, Missouri State University, Springfield, US (2021); Gather, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, US (2020); WILD WILD, Monaco Project Gallery, St. Louis, US (2019); Pleasantries, Porch House Gallery, Fayetteville, US (2019); Whirlpool, The Bermuda Project, St. Louis, US (2018), and Palais de Plastique, The Millitzer Gallery, St. Louis, US (2017).

Group exhibitions include: The Power of Small Things, Soy Capitán, Berlin, DE (2026); do WORRY be happy, Kunsthalle Barmen, DE (2025); A Garden of Promise and Dissent, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, US (2024); The Butterfly Affect, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, IT (2023); How Far, How Close, Aranya Art Center, Beidahe, CN (2023); Ecologies of Elsewhere, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, US (2023); NGXX, The Naughton Gallery, Queen’s University, Belfast, UK (2022); Hotspot, Galleria Nazionale d‘Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, IT (2022); Forest through the Trees, Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, US (2022); K60, Wilhelm Hallen, B erlin, DE (2022);  Retrograde, Galerie du Monde, Central, Hong Kong, CH (2022); Terrain Biennial, Oak Park, US (2019); Youth #4, CICA Museum, Gimpo-si, Gyeonggi-do, SK (2019); JUICY FRUIT, The Lewis Center, St. Louis, US (2018), and Thoroughly Whet, Des Lee Gallery, St. Louis, US (2017).

Rachel Youn, born 1994 in Abington, US, lives and works in Philadelphia, US.