Jason Young

Selected Works     Biography     Press Release

New Paintings

May 4 - June 17, 2000

Cristinerose Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of an exhibition by New York-based painter Jason Young, his fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. In his current body of work, he pushes his favored medium of Envirotex (a commercial resin normally used as a varnish or sealer) in unexpected, mercurial new directions, while continuing to show great finesse and imagination as a colorist.

Many artists use glossy synthetic resin as a final coat for existing layers of paint, but Young explores its versatile properties as a medium. He uses it to bind pigment, sands and shapes it like sculpture, but most significantly, uses it as a mold for itself. Spontaneous patterns of swirls or drips are cast and exactly duplicated, and the replicas are then layered one on top of the other in a kind of see-through archive.

Young has previously used this material to create patterns recalling animal skins or raindrops on windowpanes, at the same time negating the romanticism of his own marks by copying them and overlaying them slightly out of register. These investigations continue in the new work, but now he is dismantling the medium itself, leaving off final glossy coats or allowing underlying wood panels to show through.

Where previous patterns (such as "snakeskin") were invented or simulated by the artist, the new work makes cast "snapshots" of existing textures, such as the ribbed surfaces of restaurant runners or raised ovals on manhole covers. These patterns are further transformed through a process of pigmenting and sanding so that they resemble exotic, synthetic fabrics or even computer circuit boards.

Young's approach to color is just as diverse as his handling of its binding medium. Regardless of whether it is sprayed, mixed with resin, poured, or pulled up from underlayers with a sander, his choices of hue (pearlescent yellow against matte, marbled blue; flat institutional aqua over hot, magma-like earth colors) continue to surprise. Like the resin, color may be suggestive of commercial or industrial uses, but it is ultimately reconstituted as art in the studio laboratory.

Jason Young has captured the attention of an international audience with recent solo exhibitions in Vancouver, Toronto, Boston, Milan, and Soeul. His work has been exhibited widely and belongs to public and private collections in Canada, the United States, Europe and Korea.