Rachel Youn

Working across sculpture and installation, Rachel Youn sources materials with a history of aspiration and failure through online secondhand shopping. Venturing into the suburbs, Youn rescues electric massagers from “suburban limbo”, fastening artificial plants to the machines to create kinetic sculptures that are clumsy, erotic, and absurd. Their work identifies with the replica that earnestly desires to be real, and the failed object that simulates care and intimacy.

Rachel Youn received their BFA from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis and are current MFA candidate in Sculpture at 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 currently on view at their solo presentation Pleasure Circuit at Soy Capitán, Berlin, DE. Upcoming shows include a group show at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, US (2024).

Solo shows include: 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 Last Laugh, PODIUM, Hong Kong, HK (2024); Where is Your Body, SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, US (2024); Perfect Trouble, Glyndor Gallery, New York, US (2024); The Butterfly Affect, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, IT (2023); How Far, How Close, Aranya Art Center, Beidahe, CN (2023); Petromelancholia, Brutus, Rotterdam, NL (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, Berlin, DE (2022); A Knife to Carve a Knife With, La Clinica, Oaxaca, MX (2022); Retrograde, Galerie du Monde, Central, Hong Kong, CH (2022); Her Kind, Sargeant’s Daughters, New York, US (2020); 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); Re/Constructing Identity: Zlatko Ćosić, José Guadalupe Garza and Miriam Ruiz, Priya Kambli, and Rachel Youn, The Sheldon Art Galleries, St. Louis, US (2018), and Thoroughly Whet, Des Lee Gallery, St. Louis, US (2017).

Rachel Youn, born 1994 in Pennsylvania, US, lives and works in New Haven.