AARON YOUNG

b. 1972 in San Francisco, California

Lives and works in New York

 

 

He was graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2001, and received his Master´s of Fine Art from Yale University in 2004.

 

His work has been exhibited internationally at MACRO (Museo di Arte Contemporanea) in Rome, Italy; Teatro di Marcello, in Rome, Italy; as well as performances in Moscow, Naples and New York City. His work has been included in Greater New York, MoMA/PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City; Uncertain States of America Astrup Fearnley Museum of Art, Oslo; The 2006 Whitney Biennial Day for Night, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and The 2nd Moscow Biennial for Contemporary Art, Moscow; The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, PA.  His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Astrup Fearnley Museum for Modern Kunst and the Jumex Collection.  

 

Aaron Young's artworks rely on the aftereffects of dynamic, energetic, and sometimes even dangerous performances. He hires participants stereotyped as marginalized rebels, such as skateboarders and motorcycle riders, to perform various stunts in exhibition spaces on specially prepared platforms— such as the performance Arc Light for the exhibition, for what you are about to receive. Like Steven Parrino, Young uses destructive actions as generative force; the traces of his ephemeral acts are recorded as videos, drawings, sculptures, and photographs to constitute artistic artifacts. In Arc Light, Young takes Robert Rauschenberg's iconoclastic gesture, Automobile Tire Print (1951) as his starting point. But in the place of the older artist's single tire track, Young produces an opus of traces of the complex and intricate choreography performed by a team of riders. And thus an unexpected, updated, and expanded interpretation of Jackson Pollock's seminal "action paintings."

 

Incorporating performers such as skateboarders, biker gangs, tattoo artists and expert craftsmen into his work, his practice is mostly collaborative in nature. The interesting part is that his process of creation is as much an independent work of art as the end product, which relies often on the aftereffects of dynamic, energetic and sometimes even dangerous performances. Young uses these destructive actions as a generative force to show his rebellious side at adapting to what people think modern art should be.

 

Aaron Young's work can be described in extremes. He appropriates symbols associated with American freedom in the form of motorcycles, muscle cars, and the Flag, as well as its dark underbelly—barricades, barbed wire, and xenophobia (Locals Only!). His most noted work, the performative motorcycle burnouts, are spectacles that serve to reveal what lies beneath the surface while simultaneously erasing the evidence. The grandiose gestures are then reduced to minimal, abstract, sometimes monochromatic results. Although spectacle surrounds Young, most of his performances are completed with very few witnesses.