Rachel Youn’s installation "Denial" features a mechanical sculpture infused with artificial plants and repurposed materials, blending metallic, plastic, and organic forms. The piece employs secondhand massage devices and exercise machines, resulting in a whimsical, kinetic structure that captures themes of aspiration and longing. This contemporary work juxtaposes movement with stillness, evoking both humor and poignancy. The art piece challenges the viewer to consider the intersection of machine and emotion, embodying the complexity of identity and the human experience. Youn’s work highlights the intersection of suburban life, domesticity, and identity through dynamic, reimagined objects. ...
Rachel Youn animates the forgotten and the overlooked, transforming objects steeped in history and emotion into kinetic sculptures and installations. Their work often begins with secondhand massage devices, baby rockers, or exercise machines—objects once meant to soothe or support the body. Through salvage and reinvention, Youn breathes new life into these forms, merging them with artificial plants and found materials to create hybrids that are at once clumsy, erotic, absurd, and tender. The resulting sculptures resonate with a strange choreography of care—mechanical and human, unsettling and humorous, poignant and playful all at once. Youn’s practice is rooted in personal and collective identity. Through their kinetic works, they reflect themes of aspiration, immigrant experience, and the bittersweet failures embedded in domestic objects. The sculptures—jittering, gyrating, seeking motion—channel queerness, cosmic loneliness, and the yearning for connection. Movement isn’t just form—it’s a metaphor for persistence, longing, and the fragility of hope. Their approach is both tactile and conceptual, mining suburban liminality and the promise—and failure—of household machines. Through witty choreography, Rachel Youn’s sculptures become emotional stand-ins: ersatz caretakers, awkward dancers, intimate companions in motion. ...
