St. Louis-born artist Kennedy Yanko is making a triumphant return to two-dimensional work with her latest exhibition "Without Gravity" at Pace Prints, running through October 4. Known primarily for her sculptural "paint skin" works where sheets of dried paint take on a leather-like quality and are draped over metal salvage, the now Miami-based artist describes herself as "a painter that makes sculpture." This new show marks what she calls a "2D homecoming" as she explores paper pulp works for the first time.
Yanko's rise to art world prominence began with her Rubell Museum residency showcase during Art Basel 2021, establishing her as a vital voice in contemporary art. Her signature paint skin sculptures earned their own double showcase in New York earlier this year, but "Without Gravity" represents previously unexplored terrain for the artist. The exhibition features a family of multilayered compositions that echo the gestural drama and perceptual essence of her three-dimensional paintings while existing entirely on their own terms.
The decision to work with paper came from Yanko's intrigue with the unfamiliar medium. "I hadn't worked with paper pulp before, and I was very intrigued. I was nervous to work in a new medium, but walking into the unknown is when I thrive the most," Yanko explained. She credits the craftswomen at Pace Prints with helping her translate her vision, noting they "knew the material like the back of their hands." The artist found the process refreshingly immediate compared to the "excruciatingly tedious and logistical process" of sculpture.
Yanko's artistic approach is deeply rooted in her performance background at The Living Theater, a famous anarchist pacifist experimental theater company where she worked with Judith Malina. "The choreography in the work came from the methods that I learned in performance and political theater," she said. "That's where I learned how to pull something from inside of myself out." This experience taught her to develop what she calls an "intuitive muscle" and to become attuned to internal signals that guide her artistic process.
When describing how she knows a work is complete, Yanko uses the word "fullness" - comparing it to "the visual feeling of sitting around a table with your favorite people. Everything is complete. Everything is whole. Everything is right." This sensation comes from her theater training, where she learned techniques for fully engaging with being human and understanding what it meant to be a living and working artist.
The "Without Gravity" works were developed through several innovative techniques that Yanko plans to continue exploring. First, she created "explosions" by pouring pulp and pressing it under an eight-ton press at high speed, creating impressionistic points used as transfers onto paper. She then began drawing directly through the pulp with her arm, creating patterns resembling tire marks. The breakthrough technique came when she started pouring pigment directly onto papers after the first press, a method inspired by Helen Frankenthaler's revolutionary pours in abstract painting.
The exhibition was developed over four intensive weeks spread across a year, with each session approximately three months apart. The first week focused on understanding the material's properties, while the second session established rhythm and developed the arm drawing technique. The third phase solved color challenges through the pouring method, introducing deeper saturation and adding black for grittiness. The final session refined the process and created the strongest works that would define the exhibition's direction.
Working at Pace's wet paper studio proved to be a collaborative joy for Yanko, who described it as "like being at summer camp." She had never worked with so many people before and found the connectivity and fluidity of the team essential for the precise timing required in paper pulp work. The process demanded perfect synchronization to ensure successful transfers, creating what she called "a dream" working environment.
As a living artist who has expanded into curatorial work, Yanko emphasizes the importance of controlling her narrative. "As a living artist, it's important that my story is told in my own voice - to make what I want to say clear in my work, not just what others want to understand it as. As a young, ambitious woman, that's something I've been fighting for." Her curatorial efforts allow her to contextualize work in ways that traditional curators or journalists might not see, while holding space for artists who created the language that made space for her own work.
Yanko draws inspiration from a diverse range of artists, describing her references as "kind of crazy" and spanning from Light and Space artists to Dutch Reformation painters, abstract expressionists, and surrealists. Key influences include Leonardo Drew for his explosions, Torkwase Dyson for her development of Black Compositional Thought, Ann Hamilton for her environmental approach, and Olafur Eliasson for using science and consciousness to expand abstraction's dialogue.
The past year has seen Yanko working across multiple registers of her practice simultaneously, creating and exhibiting her own works while curating others. She describes wearing "30 different hats every day" and always having "a ton of tabs open" in her head. This constant movement and activation is essential to her thinking process, and she finds that having space between different mediums keeps her invigorated with each one.
Reflecting on her artistic journey, Yanko emphasizes the privilege of experimenting across mediums. She notes that when she first started working with metal, it wasn't intentional - she was "depressed and bored and just needed something else to do." This experience taught her about the power of exploration "for fun, for healing, for expansion," and she finds her best and most transformative breakthroughs come from following these desires. The "Without Gravity" exhibition ultimately represents not just a return to two-dimensional work, but a continuation of Yanko's commitment to pushing boundaries and exploring new possibilities in contemporary art.
