Kennedy Yanko: Moving Weight: CFHILL, Stockholm, SE
"Intuiting the feeling of color, when we’re taught to prioritize the logical and override internal cues, requires daily, physical, and ritualistic work. It’s through that repeated effort and excavation that transmutation becomes possible; that the artist can imbue something ephemeral or metaphysical in the art. "
CFHILL is delighted to present American artist and rising star, Kennedy Yanko, in her first solo exhibition in Scandinavia. Based in Brooklyn, New York, the Missouri native has created a new visual language with her sensual hanging sculptures and wall reliefs. By redefining the traditional concept of painting by delving into the limitless possibilities of sculpting with paint, the artist has added yet another layer into the art historical canon. Yanko approaches the more archetypal forum of metal sculpture, in particular scrap metal, and infuses the material into her practice. By opening her artistic practice to more atypical trains of thought, Yanko has expanded her expression to encompass these new directives.
It is with great pride that CFHILL presents this exhibition, a dialogue between Kennedy Yanko and one of the most important artists, painters, of the 20th Century, Hilma af Klint. Af Klint’s work, although revered, never overshadows Yanko’s four powerful, bombastic new works created for this exhibition. By allowing for a balanced dance to come to life, both artist's work give new meaning to the concept of poetry created by object and artwork. The physical and metaphysical weight the two artists encounter and challenge via their artistic practices is on display, daring the space and those who enter to engage with complex concepts of self and art making, as well as how we relate to beauty and aesthetics of the work. Moving Weight, invites the viewer to participate in an ongoing dialogue between Kennedy Yanko & Hilma af Klint, where spirituality is often left to the side as an afterthought. In defiance of this stance, we invite the observer to allow the artwork to occupy both their body and mind, truly engrossing themself with the materiality and weight of the work.
"I first met Hilma in writing. She shared a blueprint of her experience as an abstract expressionist that offered me a foothold to build upon. I’ve always been a diarist, and only in recent past did I quite realize how much material is lodged in my own entries—my own blueprints—both reflections, and very accurate predictions. At one point I’d written that I’d like to be in conversation with Hilma af Klint: the artist, the archivist, the mind, the vessel. If my work can serve as footnotes to hers, I hope the extended text provides another dimension through which the importance of abstraction as an intuitive tool may be understood.
Hilma’s language is not obvious, but it’s orchestrated; each color has a specific meaning that, when introduced to another color, becomes a formula for an outcome: inception. My colors are less about information and more about gut reactions. In selecting palettes, my body leads: expansion = yes, contraction = no. Intuiting the feeling of color, when we’re taught to prioritize the logical and override internal cues, requires daily, physical, and ritualistic work. It’s through that repeated effort and excavation that transmutation becomes possible; that the artist can imbue something ephemeral or metaphysical in the art.
When I started working on this show, I was tracing Hilma’s hand; I was looking at similarities in the way we move and in our fascination with polar spaces—her yellow and blue, my paint skin and metal. As I got deeper into the process, I began to see how my colors were expanding on hers, elaborating on an elusive undercurrent guiding shapes, forms, lightness and gravity. What I’m realizing now, is that Hilma and I are joined in our approach to abstraction; in letting it be the glue in the cracks of language and knowing."
-Kennedy Yanko
