Kennedy Yanko (b. 1988) is a Brooklyn-based artist working primarily with found objects and paint skins. Her formal gesture towards material is created by instinctual responses to the shapes, colors, textures and scale that are presented. Her work is about the ambiguity within perception and the importance of abstraction as an intuitive tool. Since debuting sculptures from her "Elements and Skin" collection as part of a Derrick Adams-curated group show, "Hidden in Plain Sight" (Jenkins Johnson Project Space. Brooklyn, NY. 2017), Yanko has shown regularly at galleries and fairs domestically and internationally. Her work belongs to the JP Morgan Chase Collection and the collections of Beth Rudin deWoody and Helyn Goldenberg. In 2019 Kennedy was awarded the Colene Brown Art Prize and was nominated for the Joan Mitchell foundation artist grant. She exhibited in Cry of Victory and Short Walks to Freedom as part of Hank Willis Thomas’ national For Freedoms project and was invited to show with Parallels and Peripheries at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. In 2019, Yanko's solo shows included Highly Worked (Denny Dimin Gallery, NY), Hannah (Kavi Gupta, Chicago), and Before Words (UICA, Grand Rapids).
