In Rachel Youn's installation "Pendulum," metallic structures support an amalgam of artificial plant life, poised over a bed of soil. The piece blends industrial and organic elements, creating a dialogue between rigidity and natural forms. Youn employs found objects and kinetic elements that inject motion and playfulness into the composition. This work reflects their exploration of domesticity and the immigrant experience, using repurposed materials to evoke a sense of cosmic loneliness and the pursuit of connection through humor and the absurd. ...
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. ...
