The Brooklyn Rail

Like many contemporary artists, Kennedy Yanko’s work looks overly familiar. This reflects the broader contemporary cultural tendency of artists recycling past forms and aesthetics. The resulting works exploit the tensions between historical reclamation, artistic convention, and the politics of spectatorship—that is, how the viewer’s role is shaped by cultural, social, and political factors. The appeal of such work in a time of cultural instability is that it balances the uncertainty caused by novelty with familiarity of modernist narratives. Yanko’s work is a spin-off of abstract painting consisting of quotes, appropriated tropes, and mannerisms taken from second-generation Abstract Expressionism.

The technical innovations that Yanko has added to her salvaged metal models are “paint skins,” which mimic drapers’ fabric-like folds. These are used merely for contrast and barely call attention to themselves. The resulting works are visually striking and technically accomplished; what they do not do is offer a fresh or unique perspectives on her sources. Yanko’s work occupies a safe, familiar, and somewhat nostalgic territory. Within this framework, it can be viewed as symptomatic of contemporary culture’s struggle since the 1990s to define new critical criteria and values in response to postmodernism, questioning the viability of any such standards.

Currently, Yanko has two exhibitions: Epithets at James Cohan Gallery and Retro Future at Salon 94. Epithets features a collection of mostly modest, wall-mounted abstract assemblages, while Retro Future, housed in Salon 94’s three-story townhouse, showcases larger works in varied formats. These sculptures operate within the aesthetic established by second-generation Abstract Expressionists—a movement active from the mid-1950s to early 1960s that served as a transitional phase soon to be superseded by Color Field painting, Pop art, and Minimalism. Second-generation Abstract Expressionists standardized the innovations of their predecessors, producing works characterized by a tension between existential and formal objectives and their codified aesthetic program. Yanko’s relationship to this derivative aesthetic program is further complicated by the bricolage logic of contemporary culture, which prioritizes narrative and concept over innovation or originality.

At the same time, another lens through which Yanko’s work can be viewed are the practices associated with the lesser-known “junk art” pioneered by artists such as Robert Mallary, Lee Bontecou, Raphael Montañez Ortiz, and Richard Stankiewicz. These peers of the second generation transformed discarded materials into forms that interrogated the boundaries between art and waste. Mallary’s assemblages used urban detritus; Ortiz’s explored destruction as a creative force; Bontecou juxtaposed industrial materials with organic forms; and Stankiewicz used scrap metal to create welded constructions that bridged figurative and abstract forms. Others in this tradition include Mark di Suvero, whose early timber-and-steel constructs explored spatial relationships; Melvin Edwards, whose welded sculptures emphasized material tactility while evoking his African American heritage; and Louise Nevelson, whose monochrome compositions were made from scrap wood. Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines can be added to this list for their integration of abstract painting with found objects, as can John Chamberlain’s sculptures made of scrapped automobile body parts. While this “brute” aesthetic, in its initial iteration some sixty years ago, challenged societal values and redefined art, it has since become a known and institutionally accepted movement that Yanko’s multi-dimensional works now operate within.

At Salon 94, Yanko’s sculptures are not inserted into the history of junk sculpture; instead, her exhibition Retro Future is accompanied by a group show titled Metal and Memory. It features works by artists such as John Chamberlain, Frank Stella, Suzanne Jackson, as well as some of Yanko’s contemporaries such as Leonardo Drew. Consequently, this show does not form a genealogy but serves as a set piece—all the works share a similar material aesthetic. As such, Yanko’s work takes its place among this curated cohort, engaging them in a familial dialogue rather than a critical one.

Efforts to position Yanko’s work within contemporary discourse have linked her practice to social and psychological dialogues concerning the Black diaspora, identity, and cultural reclamation. However, such claims are problematic because they are not directly evident in the work itself; one must be told about these associations, since her sculptures do not provoke dialogues concerning value, waste, or historical erasure. While these associations may not be overt in her sculptures, we are told of her musings on themes of gender, perception, and societal expectation; her inner life and identity are part of her artistic narrative. On the other hand, by presenting salvaged industrial detritus draped with “paint skins” as artifacts of cultural significance, Yanko might be seen as framing her practice within a self-reflective critique, which challenges audiences to critically engage with the narratives surrounding her art while reconsidering how knowledge—or its absence—shapes perceptions of cultural value.