alex young’s AWE(SOME)…
Ξ August 27th, 2008 | → | ∇ mad props |
Though it may well have been a momentary narcissistic meandering that led me to first discover this namesake of mine a few years back, I glanced over his earlier work and remember finding myself immediately taken with his unique imagery and peculiar perspective. This graffiti artist turned freelance illustrator hails from Brighton, England, and has just produced a series of paintings that have me proud that he’s an Alex Young.
It wasn’t until quite recently, when I returned to his site, that I bore witness to a new evolution in his creations and was confronted with the seemingly undeniable reality that Alex Young has emerged as a premiere artist in his field. Here’s what I found…
“Exhibitionism” ran from July 16 - August 12, 2008 at London’s Grenade Gallery and marked his first solo gallery exhibit. For this show’s works, Young investigated, interviewed, and evetually brought to spray paint and oil canvas by way of his powerful pointillist presentation, a handful of strippers and burlesque dancers. Young’s works display these performers amidst their alter egos and the preconceptions that stigmatize their work and lives. He found inspiration for these subjects in their use of alternate personas and psuedonoms from his own experience as a grafitti artist (many of whom also often disguise their true identities in an effort to evade the laws that might serve to stifle their opportunities for artistic expression).
And though decidedly outside of my own discretionary budget for artwork (as it now exists), the eleven works in his show were priced between 1200 and 4000 pounds. And now I’ll leave you to the work that’s once again (as it’s only ever happened a few times in my life) got me all kinds of excited about artistic expression… behold…
In addition to the work he created for his first exhibition, Alex Young has continued to create masterful works of all sorts… one of which you can actually watch him create here…
…and others of which make up a most impressive and ever-expanding portfolio…
So yeah… this guy’s just straight up, MAD talented… for real… I’m a HUGE fan… and yes, I get it; art’s subjective… ‘beauty’s in the eye of the beholder’… whatever… this guy’s got it going on… and he’s got a ridiculously cool name, to boot… So if you’d like to see more of his work and/or support the cause of super-ridiculous, bad-ass mo’fo’s doing the things that they were clearly created to do, I hope you’ll check out his website at www.brainofalexyoung.com…
