Aaron Young

As an art student Aaron Young (b. 1972) incited an uproar when he invited a local motorcyclist to enter San Francisco Art Institute and ride around until he either could no longer see through the smoke or until a wheel on his bike was damaged. The result of this short, volatile ride was a drawing on the gallery floor, a space which had once been the studio of Diego Rivera. Young paid the biker in beer rather than money, but as for himself, he was almost expelled from art school. The faculty was powerfully provoked. In the end he finished his undergraduate degree in San Francisco and went on to Yale where he completed a Master’s in Fine Art in 2004. In recent years Young has participated in several important group exhibitions, e.g., Uncertain States of America – American Art in the 3rd Millennium (Serpentine Gallery/Astrup Fearnley Museum, 2005) and the Whitney Biennial (2006). He also has held solo exhibitions at Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles and at Bortolami Gallery in New York City.

The New York-based generation of artists to which Aaron Young belongs is often said to be inspired by Andy Warhol. This is particularly because these artists use appropriation and have the will to collaborate with one another. This complex, dynamic generation has gained much attention from the artworld and been labelled 'Warhol’s Children' by the American media. Aaron Young is closely tied to it through his earlier collaboration with Nate Lowman, but is most known in the artworld for how he generates material for his art: he collaborates with 'rebels' or representatives of various subcultures, for instance skateboarders or bikers.

Young’s work in the exhibition Rotations #2 is the screen-print Never Work (Gold Cans, Richter) from 2005. It stems from a series called Never Work. The series title is a slogan that has been recontextualized several times, but it originated during the Paris riots of May, 1968. Each artwork in the series is accompanied by a parenthesis mentioning the motif. The first two words in the parenthesis here refer to the gold-coloured spray paint covering the canvas. Interesting in this connection is that Warhol used gold colour as a background for several of his early screen prints. The last word in the parenthesis refers to the artist Gerhard Richter. (Young also references Jasper Johns, Christopher Wool and Michael Heizer in other works from this series.) Meanwhile, this particular work seems to suggest that Young finds something vitalizing and visually interesting at the interface between street culture and the artworld. This theme runs like a red thread through his as-yet early artistic practice.

GAF