Opening reception: Thursday, January 11, 5—8pm
155 Suffolk Street, New York, NY 10002
The West exists simultaneously as a reference of relational position, and as an autonomous concept, imbued with symbolism and characteristics. Anselm Reyle & Jon Young’s works engage various qualities of the West, citing an expansive range of sources, from neon signage to land art.
Both artists operate from a position of the other: from the outside looking in. Reyle’s practice has one eye on the rich history of German abstraction, working from a studio outside Berlin; a distinguished tradition differentiated from the abstraction pioneered under mid-century American masters. Reyle’s abstraction is more concerned with forming a cross-continental dialogue with the second generation of America’s abstract painters, particularly Color Field artists such as Kenneth Noland and Sam Gilliam.
Young’s fabric, wood and sand sculptures, which he refers to as waymarks, utilize symbolism from high and low—invoking Paleolithic cave paintings in the same breath as Looney Tunes cartoons. Young’s work investigates the collapsing of layers and signifiers, particularly as related to the Romanticism of the West. The artist’s characterizes his practice as attempting “To make a map using fluctuating symbols, to get back to a home that hasn’t existed for a very long time or for so long that you question if it existed at all.” This questioning of reality is further advanced by Young’s use of sand, which affixed into a rubber resin appears to defy gravity, tying these modernist fabrications back to organic origins.
Displacement plays a central role in both artists’ continuing probing of modernity and the role of visual language. Young’s nomadic childhood, coming of age in an uprooted US military family, alongside the cultural displacement of his Native American heritage as a tribal member of the Catawba Indian Nation, informs and reflects his dual understanding of the American West.
Each work by Reyle and Young presents the viewer with an alluring façade, rich in color and texture, all the while hiding a darker twist—a masking of the uncanny. In their continued use of varied relief, both artists’ works evade and deny singular definition. Both practices continually challenge the conception of what it means for a work to be a finished object: mediating the poles of industrialized fabrication, particularly as understood as a capitalist tenet, and the handmade touch of the artisan.
Anselm Reyle (b. 1970, Tübingen, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Past solo exhibitions include the Modern Institute in Glasgow, Kunsthalle Zurich, Gagosian, New York, Galerie Almine Rech, Paris. Reyle has also participated in numerous international group exhibitions including ones at Tate Modern, London and the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy.
A selection of notable public collections includes: Centre Pompidou, France; Pinault Collection, Italy; Fondation Louis Vuitton, France; Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany; Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Rubell Family Collection, Miami; Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, South Korea; Essl Museum—Kunst der Gegenwart, Austria
Jon Young (b. 1981, Winston Salem, USA) lives and works in St. Louis, Missouri. He holds a BFA from the University of Wyoming and an MFA from the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art at Washington University in St. Louis. A tribal member of the Catawba Indian Nation in Rock Hill, South Carolina, Young explores the development of language and signage in the American West. Recent projects include a solo booth at Intersect Aspen with Carl Kostyál Gallery.