CHRISTINE TIEN WANG & RACHEL YOUN
Factory Doomscroll
February 24 — April 4, 2026
Night Gallery is pleased to present Factory Doomscroll, a two-person exhibition of new work by San Francisco-based artist Christine Tien Wang and Albuquerque-based artist Rachel Youn. The show opens 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.
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.
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."
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.