Kennedy Yanko

What Unites Us

In the frame of the program dedicated to dialogue between architecture and contemporary art, the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine invites Kennedy Yanko, an American artist, to occupy its spaces. There she presents an ensemble of sculptures conceived in resonance with the plaster casts of the Carlu Gallery, offering a contemporary reading of this space.

Originally from St. Louis, United States, Kennedy Yanko develops a practice at the crossroads of painting, sculpture and installation. An heir to Abstract Expressionism, Action Painting and Color Field, she transforms recovered materials, principally metal, into sculptural structures that she coats with acrylic paint. Her works thus pair the solidity of steel with the flexibility of color, in a balance between strength and fragility.

Displayed within the Gallery of Plaster Casts of the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, at the Palais de Chaillot, Kennedy Yanko’s works dialogue with French monumental sculptures. Installed opposite the portals and sculpted figures, they extend the play of folds, volumes and materials, while revealing the reverse sides of architectural structures, usually invisible. Their hybrid forms evoke the world of David Cronenberg. Not departing from the collections, they offer a contemporary reading, where architecture and sculpture, memory and creation, past and present resonate.

At the heart of her work lies the memory of materials. Metal, derived from industrial scrap, preserves traces of its past uses (twists, impacts, oxidation) while paint surfaces, thick and pliable, alternately evoke textile, skin or drapery. Between heaviness and movement, control and spontaneity, her sculptures give rise to organic forms where matter seems to be undergoing metamorphosis.