» New York – Dustin Yellin: “Cave Painting” at Venus Over Manhattan Through June 3rd, 2023

Dustin Yellin, Beneath the Wheel (2023), via Venus Over Manhattan

On this month in New York, artist Dustin Yellin presents a solo exhibition of new work at Venus Over Manhattan, exploring the imagery and structures of the natural world in relation to interconnected narratives around technological landscapes, human perception, and systemic modes of meaning-making and understanding. Comprising a series of new paintings, Cave Painting represents an important shift to painting for the artist whose practice in recent years has focused most notably on sculpture.

Born in California and raised in Colorado, Yellin is well known for his glass and acrylic life-size sculptures where layers of multi-media collage and paint are overlaid to create visually rich miniature worlds. The sculptural forms encompass both the fantastic and dystopic, and flex between two- and three-dimensional space depending on the viewer’s position. By shifting his focus to two-dimensional space, this body of work is an exciting new exploration of Yellin’s core lines of inquiry: nature and technology. In keeping with the artist’s unique visual language, Cave Painting invites the viewer to discover the foreign and familiar through careful looking and discovery.

Dustin Yellin, Giacometti’s Rainbow (2023), via Venus Over Manhattan

Dustin Yellin, Broken Bridge (2023), via Venus Over Manhattan

This new show, as a result, not only engages with new modes of image-making, but similarly new themes around the natural phenomena of caves – secret hideaways hidden deep beneath the underbelly of the earth. In keeping with his career-long fascination with the intersection of nature and technology, this presentation takes up the cave as a deep geological archive of our planet’s history and our place within the natural world. A cave, as a natural chamber, or series of chambers in the earth, is usually underground and has been historically used for the safekeeping of stories, images, artifacts and cultural histories. As such, Yellin’s paintings contain layered chambers and stories.

Delving into the nature of the cave as both structure and system, a twisted, swirling collection of images and perceptions, the artist’s work is on view through June 3rd.

– C. Rhinehardt

Read more:
Dustin Yellin at Venus Over Manhattan [Exhibition Site]

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