Kevin Yaun: In Between Walls

In this new series, Kevin Yaun is visualizing his idea of home and exploring the distortion he sees in that relationship. Yaun was born in Georgia and over the last 20 years has moved almost yearly and lived all over the world: Colorado, The Netherlands, England, Thailand, Singapore, and California to name a few. This transient lifestyle brought with it a deep understanding of the many faceted concept of home. ‘Home’ has become an abstract - a place that doesn’t exist, an unknown location to long for, an unattainable dream to strive for, or finding home wherever one finds oneself.

The winding pathway to find or create home is echoed in the process Yaun works through in these paintings. Building layer upon layer, Yaun is experimenting and testing on each canvas. The history of these accumulated thoughts in paint create a depth and a texture that belies the elegant simplicity of the final composition. The titles speak to the complicated notion of home - Shiny Object (something to be desired), Pacific Coast (home to the wealthy few), Window (wistfully looking through or at).  

Kevin Yaun’s canvases blur the line between abstraction and representation. They play with color fields and architecture, geometry and landscape. They center the viewer in an ambiguous location: are we inside looking out? Are we outside looking in? And yet these paintings are not portraits or specific narratives - they invite the viewer into the conversation. Figures wait patiently - often alone but seemingly not lonely - they are pensive, considering. Yaun cites the likes of Rothko and Diebenkorn as influencing his work and one can see a lineage.  And yet Yaun’s work is for and of this moment. This moment where home can be far away for a plethora of reasons (economic unattainability, increasingly transient lifestyles) - where home is what we create in each moment.

KEVIN YAUN (b. 1986) received his BFA from Savannah College of Art & Design in 2008 and his MFA from Laguna College of Art & Design in 2024. His paintings have been featured at the Laguna Art Museum as well as at numerous exhibitions and fairs throughout the US and are included in private collections internationally. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

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Gallery Hours: Wed-Sat, 10am-5pm
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, October 12th, 4-7pm