DIRECTORY 2026

Randong Yu | Sculpture

Yu Randong (b. 2000) explores belief systems as they soften under the pressure of collective intimacy, desire, and playful autonomy. His practice unfolds within sites charged with extreme sentiment, burial grounds, postwar ruins, research laboratories, and playgrounds, where logic, belief, and play coexist. Through manipulated forms, didactic narratives, theological texts, and archival remnants, Yu examines how disparate frameworks converge in their search for certainty, and how fragility and assurance surface through material presence.

Treating these environments as porous thresholds between the rational and the spiritual, the sentient and the inert, Yu works from the premise that matter remembers. Forms, materials, and spaces carry residues of feeling and fragile certainty, appearing familiar while concealing affect. His sculptures, paintings, and research-based installations press into these intervals, exposing the latent tensions that arise when rigid systems fail to contain unruly sentiment. Rather than stabilizing meaning, Yu’s work reveals reality as something touched fleetingly, through gaps, contradictions, and moments where tangible perception and intangible faith momentarily align.

Yu is based in Tokyo and Shanghai. He holds A.B. degrees from Brown University and a Master’s degree from Harvard University, and has led research-based projects at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and MIT.

yurandong.com
@randongyu