BEAUTIFUL LAYERS: DUSTIN YELLIN PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY
DUSTIN YELLIN
As we walk, we often pick up bits and pieces of the places we pass through. Leaves, pebbles, seashells, bits of paper, clippings, nuggets of sea glass, seed pods… things that catch our eyes and hearts in a way that beg to be remembered. They create layers of memory, layers of psyche, and layers of soul. Though less physically collectible, we do this in urban settings as well, as we observe bits of cultural and industrial artefacts, color and texture along our city walks. There’s a name for this pastime: “Psychogeography.”
Artist Dustin Yellin kicked that method up into a whole new dimension with his 3D glass collage sculptures in an ongoing series, entitled Psychogeographies. They are massive, in both stature and impact.
The Brooklyn-based artist, paints and affixes his findings in intricate compositions between multiple layers of glass, which, when stacked, create a single intricate, three-dimensional sculpture. They mimic the multiple layers of our consciousness -- the many parts of what makes us who we are, as Yellin points out in his TED Talk.
When viewed from a distance, we marvel at each whole sculpture -- a giant glass block with an ethereal image at its core. Upon closer inspection we find the pieces of Yellin’s consciousness -- bizarre found objects and clippings -- everything from flower arrangements to dead mice to eccentric images cut from magazines.
Figures appear as ephemeral, as if we are viewing souls vs. bodies or landscapes. They are as if frozen in time -- in ice perhaps -- their spirits caught in a passing moment. They evoke Damien Hirst’s specimens floating in formaldehyde filled glass cubes.
Yellin calls his pieces “sculptural paintings.” The bits of life collected and presented are meant to also serve as “roadmaps for future generations.”
When he first explored this theme, he created his pieces with resin, pouring it on his collage pieces. But after becoming concerned about the health risks work this medium, he began to experiment with glass, developing this layered technique to execute his vision.
While on one hand the figures in the Psychogeographies series are autobiographical, because they contain things that Yellin came across within his own life journey, they are things that once belonged to others. So, they really represent a communal biography -- a collective unconsciousness.
“The universe and the mind are shadowy places seething with dark magic, seas of boundless depth and possibility, seething with joy and disaster,” says Yellin.
Psychogeography 43 looks like a figure trying to push out of its frozen trap -- perhaps out of its past and into its future.
Psychogeography 8 looks like a figure whose mind and body has exploded. We see it as joy.
In 2010, Yellin founded Pioneer Works. He calls it a social sculpture.
Yellin and his assistants work out of a converted brick warehouse space in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a studio linked to Pioneer Works Center for Arts, which Yellin founded for the local creative community.
Similar to MoMA PS1, Pioneer Works is a vibrant part of the New York art scene, and a model for experimental and collaborative creative practices. The center is dedicated to the creation, synthesis and discussion of art, science and education.
Through a community devoted to creative discourse and collaboration, Pioneer Works is a platform where ideas can manifest into their fullest expression. Part museum, part school laboratory you see art, both in process and on display. There is both science and art happening here.
Read more about Beautiful Layers all this week on BeautifulNow, including Time Travel Via Layered Cities: Vhils. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
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