Rachel Yanku, "Derb"

For Yanku and her abstract assemblage works, the garden is her studio, where wood gathered from surrounding streets of Bushwick comes together in arrangements referencing fragments of agricultural structures, urban textures, and abstract paintings. Often portions of previous works —“hearts,” she calls them— are recycled as points of germination for new works, much as the farmer uses the remains of a harvested crop to prepare the bed for the following season. Plumb is a narrow piece, constructed of thin strips of wood painted in earth tones of green, brown, and copper, streaking upward against the wall over seven feet high. Like a “zip” from a Barnett Newman painting, it bisects the gallery space, creating both a division and a median. Yanku’s work is the fence around the garden, covered in twining vines of morning glories, a collision of rural and urban, past and future, human and creature.

Rachel Yanku lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She makes wooden sculptures that focus on abstraction and assemblage. Her practice is influenced by her background studying dance at Bennington College as well as her time working as a groundskeeper at a botanical garden in New Jersey. In 2021 she started a pop up series called “ART SHOW.” Every few months she hosts group shows in her apartment and friends’ backyards. Her project centers the artist’s current interests as well as community. Yanku’s curation is expanding to Wisconsin this fall; her first project in a gallery space at The Real Tinsel Gallery. Her first solo show was at Evil Twins Gallery in Wisconsin (2023), and has been featured in group shows with Popgun Gallery, Outlet Manhattan, Bullet Space, NADA, and is thrilled to be included in Field of Play’s program.