21st March – 21st April 2012
Hilary Crisp presents Glade – a solo exhibition by George Young. Comprised of a new mixed media installation, this will be Young’s third exhibition with the gallery, the first in its Whitechapel location.
Working recently with moving image, painting and sculpture, Young collages media into choreographed installations, exploring visual information and representational strategies. Paintings on paper cut a varied section through contemporary imagery. Source material is derived from current news media, stock image libraries, computer generated graphics, satellite images as well as archival and historical references – producing an admixture of humour, candour and objectivity. Though the criteria remain illusive, Young translates the imagery into poster-like paintings that are intuative and adroitly executed; often with one layer of thinned paint on paper. Combinations and affinities develop, edited into new formations that allow for new interpretation.
In past exhibitions, paintings have been placed with and alongside structural forms, frame-like objects, infinity curves and plinths, acting as contextual devices that supply or suggest neutral environments for objects and images. But like the subject matter of the paintings, the structures digress, changing their function in new or contradictory ways: a background becomes a screen, a screen is used as a plinth and frames become redundant – reevaluating presentation methods and hierarchies. The images and objects located closely blur the boundaries of one work to another questioning how images from different epochs and registers work together – and what tools can be used to create or diffuse the relationships between them. The diversity of the images and objects create psychological and symbolic space, all in close proximity, forming a fluctuating and erratic viewpoint.
George Young (B. 1981; lives and works in London) received an MA from the Royal College of Art, London in 2008. Recent exhibitions include Momentum, 6th Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, Moss (2011); The Shape We’re In, Zabludowicz Collection, London (2011). Forthcoming projects include Latitude selected by Ben Borthwick; Museum of Modern Art, Baku.