NEW YORK, NY.- Sargent’s Daughters is opening Restraint, an exhibition featuring the work of Wynnie Mynerva, Sarah Slappey, and Rachel Youn. Placing paintings, sculptures, and drawings by these artists in dynamic conversation, the exhibition explores depictions of physical constraints to consider the balance between strength and vulnerability, pain and pleasure. Evoking both tangible limitations of the body and emotional limitations placed on women and queer people, Restraint examines the societal constructs that confine and define the feminine experience.

Wynnie Mynerva’s (b.1992, Lima, Peru) practice spans painting, performance and video, railing against centuries of Western, phallocentric artwork which has perpetuated the dynamic of male as active, female as passive. Wynnie Mynerva seeks to reject this standard, as well as the binary notion of gender on which it is based. Their monumental paintings depict convoluted bodies in a state of constant flux, refusing to be defined or contained, subverting the methods and mythological iconography of Old Masters to produce emancipatory visions of disobedience and pleasure. In 2023, Mynerva’s work was the subject of solo exhibitions at the New Museum, New York and Gathering, London; they have also had solo presentations at Latchkey Gallery, New York (2021); Museo AMANO, Lima (2020) and Fundación Euroidiomas, Lima (2019) amongst others. Mynerva is currently undertaking a residency at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam.

Sarah Slappey (b. 1984, Columbia, South Carolina) is a painter based in Brooklyn, NY. Slappey’s work considers the grotesque underpinnings of idealized femininity. At once beautiful and shameful, the glimpses of bodies depicted by Slappey offer a nuanced look at how beauty and womanhood are not naturally occurring phenomena, but rather the products of significant time and labor. Femininity, for Slappey, is both desirable and dangerous.

Slappey received her MFA from Hunter College in 2016. She has had solo exhibitions at Maria Bernheim Gallery (Zurich, Switzerland) and Sargent’s Daughters (New York, NY). Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Pond Society (Shanghai, China); the Schlossmuseum (Linz, Austria); König Galerie (Berlin, Germany); White Cube (Paris, France); The Pit (Los Angeles, CA); and Andrew Edlin Gallery (New York, NY). Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MAMCO) Geneva, Switzerland; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; The Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC. Slappey’s work has been reviewed by Artforum, The New Yorker, The Art Newspaper, Artnet, Artsy, ArtSpace, Harper’s Bazaar Japan, Vogue Italia, and Flash Art, among others. She is represented by Sargent’s Daughters.

Rachel Youn (b. 1994, Abington, PA) is an artist living and working in New Haven, CT. Working across sculpture and installation, Youn sources materials with a history of aspiration and failure through online secondhand shopping. Youn rescues electric massagers from suburban limbo, fastening artificial plants to the machines to create kinetic sculptures that are clumsy, erotic, and absurd. Haunted by their immigrant father’s pursuit of the American Dream, their work identifies with the replica that earnestly desires to be real, and the failed object that simulates care and intimacy.

Youn has recently exhibited at Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Rome, Italy), Laumeier Sculpture Park (St. Louis, MO), Soy Capitán (Berlin, Germany), Truman State University Art Gallery (Kirksville, MO), Night Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), HAIR + NAILS (Minneapolis, MN) and Contemporary Art Museum (St. Louis, MO). Youn had their debut New York solo show No Pain No Gain at Sargent’s Daughters in July 2022.

Youn is a recipient of the Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and the 2020 Great Rivers Biennial Award. They received their BFA from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Youn is currently an MFA candidate at Yale School of Art in New Haven, CT. They are represented by Sargent’s Daughters.

Sargent’s Daughters
Restraint: Wynnie Mynerva, Sarah Slappey, & Rachel Youn
December 14th, 2023 - January 27th, 2024