Artist Kennedy Yanko combines huge chunks of crushed metal with fabric-like drapings of "paint skin," playing with gravity, material, and the definition of painting itself.

Brooklyn-based artist Kennedy Yanko uses salvaged metal and blanket-like ?paint skins? to create incredible artworks that challenge the definition of painting and perfectly balance a range of oppositions. Her current exhibition Humming on Life presents 10 new artworks on view at Jeffery Deitch in New York through April 22nd.
Kennedy Yanko’s “Humming on Life” at Jeffery Deitch, NYC, installation
What we re-quire is / silence, 2023 (detail)
Metal feels weightless, refuse becomes beautiful, and paint breaks free from canvas. The ?paint skins? in Yanko’s work are literally just paint ? first created flat and then draped over, between, and within the crushed metal. The fabric-like folds and crushed-metal dents echo each other while both feel organically matched ? as if the two elements have somehow grown together. Pink and green music, 2023
Pink and green music, 2023 (detail)
Breath of the earth, 2023
Breath of the earth, 2023 (detail)
These new 2023 works add a new layer to her process. On previous works, the color of the paint skins was inspired by an existing color on the found metal: perhaps a lime green from oxidized copper or a burgundy from a small patch of rust. But in these new works, Kennedy has introduced the act of painting onto the metal itself with more...