Lucy Kim, Rachel LaBine, Isabel Yellin at Lyles & King

Artists: Lucy Kim, Rachel LaBine, Isabel Yellin

Venue: Lyles & King, New York, US

Date: November 17, 2017 – January 7, 2018

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Lyles & King, New York

Lyles & King is pleased to present an exhibition of painting and sculpture by Rachel LaBine, Isabel Yellin, and Lucy Kim, on view from November 17, 2017 to January 7, 2018.

Lucy Kim’s practice disrupts photography’s seamless link between referent and image. Using mold-making and casting as the sculptural equivalent to photography, she oil paints over her casts to highlight the image-making impulse. In works focused on the bodies of a geneticist, plastic surgeon, and fitness trainer – occupations involved in manipulating the human body – Kim has taken silicone molds of the subjects and repeatedly cast them in plastic. By flattening and stretching, Kim distorts each cast to create visceral variations that explore the perceptual effects of image technology on the human body.

Central to the paintings by Rachel LaBine are questions surrounding legibility and point of view. LaBine shifts between observational and improvised modes of painting to consider the illusions of solid ground and solid self, and the pictures which hold those ideas in place.

Isabel Yellin creates stuffed leatherette anthropomorphic forms with an intense, raw presence. Yellin’s sculptures are reminiscent in shape of exquisite corpses, while the constricting material provides a hide on which light plays very differently than on skin. The fetishistic leatherette also imparts a sensuality that operates on tactile attraction. Yellin’s grotesque, assertive sculptures evoke a world where meaning is constructed and construed through force and vulnerability.

Lucy Kim (b. 1978, Seoul, South Korea) lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Recent solo exhibitions include Stubborn Doubles, Galerie Pact, Paris; Lucy Kim: Rejuvenate and Repeat, Institute of Fine Arts – New York University; and A Parrot in a Bell, Lisa Cooley, New York. Selected group exhibitions include the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston; Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg; Brooklyn Academy of Music; Samson, Boston; Fused, San Francisco; and Lundgren Gallery, Majorca. Kim is a 2017 recipient of the James and Audrey Foster Prize from the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

Rachel LaBine (b. 1987, Grand Forks, North Dakota) lives between New York and Los Angeles, and is in her first year of the MFA program at Columbia University. Her work has been included in recent exhibitions at Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland; Ms. Barber’s, Los Angeles; and Kodomo, New York.

Isabel Yellin (b. 1987, New York, New York) lives in Los Angeles. Recent solo exhibitions include It’ll Come, Night Gallery, Los Angeles; Tabula Rasa, Cabinet/Studiolo, Milan; You Gotta Be Bad You Gotta Be Good, Rear Window, New York; Peeling, Lock Up International, Istanbul; and Pillow Talk, Skibum MacArthur, Los Angeles.

Lucy Kim, Rachel LaBine, Isabel Yellin, 2017-2018, exhibition view, Lyles & King, New York

Isabel Yellin, Times Like These I Want To Be From Somewhere Else, 2017, Leatherette, urethane rubber stuffing, thread, chain, 87 x 21 x 16 inches

Isabel Yellin, Times Like These I Want To Be From Somewhere Else, 2017, Leatherette, urethane rubber stuffing, thread, chain, 89 x 27 x 11 inches

Isabel Yellin, Times Like These I Want To Be From Somewhere Else, 2017, Leatherette, urethane rubber stuffing, thread, chain, 87 x 21 x 16 inches

Isabel Yellin, Times Like These I Want To Be From Somewhere Else, 2017, Leatherette, urethane rubber stuffing, thread, chain, 89 x 27 x 11 inches

Isabel Yellin, Times Like These I Want To Be From Somewhere Else, 2017, Leatherette, urethane rubber stuffing, thread, chain, 104 x 23 x 19 inches

Rachel LaBine, Elvira (egg), 2017, Oil on panel, 11 x 8 inches

Rachel LaBine, Taut Stem, Blithe Spirit, 2017, Oil on panel, 10 x 8 inches

Rachel LaBine, Fickle clock, 2017, Oil on panel, 10 x 8 inches

Rachel LaBine, A Shifting Plate, 2017, Oil on panel, 7 x 5 inches

Lucy Kim, Plastic Surgeon (Dr. Melissa Doft) #1, 2017, Oil, acrylic, Flashe, spray enamel, urethane resin, epoxy, fibreglass, powder-coated aluminum frame, 32 x 23.5 x 3 inches

Lucy Kim, Plastic Surgeon (Dr. Melissa Doft) #4, 2017, Oil, acrylic, Flashe, spray enamel, urethane resin, epoxy, fibreglass, powder-coated aluminum frame, 32 x 23.5 x 3 inches

Lucy Kim, Fitness Trainer (Stephen Marino) #6, 2017, Oil, acrylic, Flashe, spray enamel, urethane resin, epoxy, fibreglass, powder-coated aluminum frame, 32 x 23.5 x 3 inches