CHRISTINE TIEN WANG & RACHEL YOUN: Factory Doomscroll

Installation View: CHRISTINE TIEN WANG & RACHEL YOUN Factory Doomscroll, 2276 E. 16th Street, Los Angeles, California 90021, February 24 — April 4, 2026 Photography courtesy Marten Elder and Night Gallery.

Night Gallery is pleased to present Factory Doomscroll, a two-person exhibition of new work bySan Francisco-based artist Christine Tien Wang and Albuquerque-based artist Rachel Youn. The show opened on February 24, 2026, during Frieze Los Angeles. While Wang has been showing work at the gallery for over a decade, Factory Doomscroll marks Youn’s second major exhibition, following Well Adjusted in 2023.

Installation View: CHRISTINE TIEN WANG & RACHEL YOUN Factory Doomscroll, 2276 E. 16th Street, Los Angeles, California 90021, February 24 — April 4, 2026 Photography courtesy Marten Elder and Night Gallery.

Both artists revel in the exhaustive gestures of contemporary life—the perpetual motion that leads nowhere. Youn's sculptures animate the artifacts of self-care culture, transforming massage devices and baby rockers into tireless performers locked in cycles of jiggling, turning, and pleasure-seeking labor. Wang paints photorealistic internet memes, elevating digital detritus into something worthy of sustained attention. Both artists take objects designed for instant gratification—whether physical comfort or viral dopamine hits—and trap them in a kind of amber, forcing us to reckon with what we consume and discard. Where Youn's motors expose the mechanical infrastructure behind our pursuit of wellness and ease, Wang's brushwork exposes the labor required to make the throwaway permanent. Their works operate as preservation acts with a wink: Youn keeps the comfort machines running long past their useful life, while Wang rescues memes from algorithmic decay, both artists archiving the absurd rituals through which we attempt to soothe or entertain ourselves into oblivion.

Where Youn's motors expose how quickly comfort technology is discarded, Wang's paintings reveal how rapidly viral moments decay into cultural landfill. Youn keeps well-worn machines running past their planned lifespans, transforming wellness devices into zombie performers. Wang paints memes as if they were Old Masters, granting permanence to content created to be consumed and forgotten within hours. Wang and Youn’s collaboration is a significant and honest reflection of the times: an era wherein late capitalism generates unprecedented waste—and manufactured obsolescence pushes consumers to continually scroll, upgrade, and replace.

Installation View: CHRISTINE TIEN WANG & RACHEL YOUN Factory Doomscroll, 2276 E. 16th Street, Los Angeles, California 90021, February 24 — April 4, 2026 Photography courtesy Marten Elder and Night Gallery.

In two of Wang's paintings, Luigi Mangione—accused assassin of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson—is rendered holy. At once winged and ripped, a halo encircles Mangione's thick curls, a pistol in each hand. The meme was already aging when Wang began painting it, its cultural relevance ticking toward zero. Several paintings depict sexual innuendos, subverted by comical, cerebral text. Collection of Failures (2025) spotlights a grinning blonde in front of a made bed, the smallest glimpse of a penis gripped by a French-manicured hand. The overlaying text reads: "Oh my god, I think this is the biggest I've ever seen." But the real joke comes from what's typed above: "When you show her your collection of failures."

Installation View: CHRISTINE TIEN WANG & RACHEL YOUN Factory Doomscroll, 2276 E. 16th Street, Los Angeles, California 90021, February 24 — April 4, 2026 Photography courtesy Marten Elder and Night Gallery.

Additionally, Youn’s work begets the giggles of nonsense—when inexplicable permutations render reality absurd and therefore hilarious. In Plunge (2025), Youn secures artificial orchids to the motor of a circulation massager. Strips of grow lights serve as anchors, glass-jeweled chains hanging from their stems. When darkness falls, the sculpture lights its own party, grooving to the beat of its own design. CLEANSE (I'll do it myself) (2024) reimagines a car wash after its commercial usefulness has ended. Wavy nylon strips hang from a tall steel frame, animated by an AC motor. The plastic is printed with an idyllic beach scene: clear waters and a painfully blue sky. It's self-care infrastructure performing for no one, automated bliss running on empty.

Wang and Youn's collaboration serves as a testament to the excess that comes with contemporary Western living.  Youn's sculptures demonstrate physical obsolescence in real time —you watch motors strain, materials degrade, technology outlive its purpose. Wang's paintings sustain cultural fads mid-decay, preserving memes that were born to be outdated. The show pulses with the artists' shared humor about late capitalism's promise of perpetual self- optimization and infinite content, revealing how both the physical and digital economies of comfort are built on foundations of repetition, manufactured obsolescence, and a nagging sense that none of it quite delivers what it promises.

Christine Tien Wang (b. 1985, Washington, D.C.) has had solo exhibitions at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne, Berlin, and Munich, Germany; The Hole, New York, NY; Magenta Plains, New York, NY; PTT Space, Taipei, Taiwan; M. LeBlanc, Chicago, IL; and Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco, CA. Her work has been included in group shows at the Frans-Hals Museum, Haarlem; Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, Busan, Korea; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York; The Rockbund Museum, Shanghai, China; M. LeBlanc Gallery, Chicago; Et Al, San Francisco; LAXART, Los Angeles; Foxy Production, New York; and African American Museum in Philadelphia, PA, among others. Currently, her work is on view at the Rockbund Museum in Shanghai, China. Wang lives and works in San Francisco.

Rachel Youn (b. 1994, Abington, PA) has had solo exhibitions at Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Sargent’s Daughters, New York, NY; G Gallery, Seoul, South Korea; and Soy Capitán, Berlin, Germany, among others. Youn has participated in numerous group exhibitions at venues including Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy; FuoriCamp, Siena, Italy; Kunsthalle Barmen, Wuppertal, Germany; DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague, Czech Republic; Alice Amati, London, UK; PODIUM, Hong Kong, China; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; SHRINE, New York, NY; Gallery Belenius, Stockholm, Sweden; and Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH, among others. 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, St. Louis, MO. Youn holds an MFA from Yale School of Art in New Haven. They live and work in Albuquerque, NM and are represented by Sargent’s Daughter (New York), Soy Capitán (Berlin), and G Gallery (Seoul).

For more information about this exhibition and current and future exhibitions, please visit Night Gallery’s site here. The magazine did an interview with Rachel, which can be found here.