B. 1988, Seattle, WA, USA; lives and works in London, UK.
Scott Young's work explores how images and objects absorb and hold significance in strange and uncanny ways dependent on context and lived experience. Focusing on how cultural references move between personal sites of transformation and the alienating effects of mass media, his paintings reimagine still life and vanitas through a variety of contemporary lenses. Embedding objects and motifs with complex social significance he re-codes the status of materials and their social and financial values using techniques such as trompe l’oeil. Central to his practice is the tension between dichotomies; imitation vs. reality, image vs. object, tradition vs. technology, reflecting the growing complexity and atomisation of modern life.
Young is fascinated by how technology has been domesticated since the advent of network television, particularly interested in the role of furniture in transforming media into familiar, household objects. This theme is present in much of his work, where the tension between image and object recalls a modernist impulse to simultaneously blur boundaries yet systematically organise life into order. Through subtle alterations, careful positioning of cultural references and a visual hacking of references, Young’s work questions categorisation and explores how digital technologies reinforce these distinctions in an increasingly polarised world.
Scott Young’s recent solo exhibitions ...
