Kennedy Yanko is a sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Physicality is essential to Yanko’s practice. Scouring the urban metal yards and demolition sites of New York City, she seeks out intuitive, physical connections with abandoned materials that she can transform in her studio. The work is about welcoming a new paradigm of thinking, in which we consider not only what we are now, but how things have come to us in this moment.

In this sculpture, a formal conversation is happening between the heavily bodied metals and the soft, monochromatic paint skins. “The framework supports the paint skin,” Yanko says, “and the metal becomes the composition that the skin responds to. I’m fascinated with paradox, and seeming opposites, when actually they are so dependent on each other. I’m interested in the moment when they come together in that interdependence.”

Beyond atomic dualities, what’s most important to Yanko are the shadows in the work—the unnoticed or invisible spaces between the layers, that don’t get talked about. The shadows point to the shadow self and challenge the idea of seeing, or of eyes being the only way to take in knowledge. This work suggests a vision beyond what’s seen, gained through the full sensory state.