Installation view, Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, October 1-December 31, 2023. Courtesy of the Hammer Museum. Photo: Charles White

Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living

Oct 1 - Dec 31, 2023
Hammer Museum

In their sculptural practice, Young Joon Kwak frequently constructs works from cast bodies that are abstracted through cropping, bold color, and texture. Recently they have been working on reverse-cast “skin” pieces, delicate vessels that capture the impressions of members of their community. By covering these bodily forms with a layer of glittering rhinestones, Kwak seeks to change the way viewers look at bodies in the first place. In using a material derived from drag culture, they suggest both hypervisibility and the pleasure in and need for camouflage. Kwak’s object-based practice grew out of their work as a drag performer and lead singer of the “drag-electronic-dance-noise band” Xina Xurner, created with their partner Marvin Astorga in 2011.

Recently Kwak’s interest in abstracted forms has extended to rhinestone-covered paintings of color-changing chameleon skins that appear to shift in form and color with the movement of the viewer. Abstraction disorients the moment of recognition wherein identity and meaning are assigned to a body. Kwak understands their work to be exploring the transitional nature of all bodies but in particular the experience of living in a trans body.

-Ashton Cooper

All photos by Paul Salveson unless otherwise noted.