JUNE 2026

“Kyle Young’s paintings occupy a space between dream, performance, and allegory. In Superstar, a solitary figure in a pink zebra-striped dress, bunny ears, and sunglasses sits alongside a duck and a traffic cone, surrounded by symbols that feel both deeply personal and strangely theatrical. In Paradise, two figures inhabit a tropical landscape at sunset, where roses, fruit, insects, wine, and a toy-like gun coexist beneath hovering helicopters and caution tape. The scenes are carefully staged, yet their narratives remain unresolved. Why is this paradise? Where did that duck come from? In New Orleans, we know not to ask “Why?”.

Rather than presenting fixed stories, Young constructs worlds where identity is performed, and meaning is assembled through association. His characters seem caught between self-invention and self-consciousness, inhabiting environments that are at once seductive and uneasy. Humor, glamour, danger, youth, and vulnerability are held in delicate balance, inviting viewers to navigate the tension between fantasy and reality.”

Curatorial Statement by Bradley Sumrall, Curator of Collection at Ogden Museum for Southern Art.

Sumrall served as the curator for Tigers in the Garden, an exhibition presented by the John Burton Harter Foundation.