Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

Kennedy Yanko

American sculptor, painter, and installation artist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kennedy Yanko
Remove ads

Kennedy Yanko (born October 21, 1988, in St. Louis, Missouri)[1][2] is an American sculptor, painter, and installation artist known for working with "paint skins" and found metal.[3] Yanko sources discarded objects and other material from salvage yards and manipulates or modifies their form, shape, or structure into her vision. Her abstract work draws upon surrealism, abstract expressionism and physical austerities, as well as her background in performance art.[3][4][5]

Quick facts Born, Occupation(s) ...
Remove ads

Work

To create “paint skins,” Yanko pours large amounts of paint and lets it dry into a tarp-like material. From there, she sculpts the paint skin, using her whole body to manipulate the heavy sheet of paint. The paint skin thus becomes a structural material not dissimilar from the metal she utilizes in her sculptures. At times, the two materials are indistinguishable.[6]

In 2023, she presented the solo exhibition Kennedy Yanko: Tilted Lift at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, as part of this institution's Mike Kelley Mobile Homestead lawn program.[7] In 2024, the Pérez Art Museum Miami, acquired her wild wild country (2023) as part of its PAMM Fund for Black Art.[8]

In 2025 Yanko had exhibitions at Salon 94 gallery (Kennedy Yanko: Retro Future) and James Cohan gallery (Kennedy Yanko: Epithets).[9]

Public art

In 2019, Yanko installed her first public sculpture, titled 3 WAYS, as part of the Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition,[10] funded by the Helis Foundation, in New Orleans.[11]

Remove ads

Residencies

Public collections

References

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads