FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 2024
Russell Young: For Your Eyes Only exhibition at The White Room Gallery
Russell Young, Bardot Supreme – Luna Bluehand, pulled acrylic, enamel screen print and diamond dust on linen, 62 x 48 in
East Hampton, NY – British-American artist Russell Young presents his new solo exhibition For Your Eyes Only at The White Room Gallery. The exhibition is on view August 13 – September 8, 2024, with an opening reception on Saturday, August 17, 5:00–7:00 PM.
Young’s signature diamond-dusted paintings have now become perhaps as iconic as the cultural figures they depict. In Young’s hands, celebrities become symbols, their silhouettes and features standing in to represent a key theme of contemporary American culture, and of Young’s work: the end of the American dream. Our own recognition of Young’s nostalgic images leads us to realize that they no longer represent what they used to.
The icons Young was surrounded by early in his career, when he was photographing rock and roll bands and shooting music videos for MTV, continue to transfix us; and Young’s new paintings make us dig deeper and investigate why these faces still grab our attention. Young’s one-of-a-kind hand-mixed pigments, meticulously hand-pulled silk screens, and tactile layers of gritty diamond dust create a precise filter through which to view each image. This filter allows us to reinterpret these images, as if we are seeing them clearly for the very first time.
Russell Young. Photo: Rocco Ceselin
About Russell Young
Russell Young, born in 1959 in Yorkshire, is a British-American artist best known for his large scale silk screen paintings examining cultural icons, the nature of fame, and the souring of the American Dream.
His earliest breakthrough was his photography of George Michael for the sleeve of the album Faith in 1987. Young photographed many music stars throughout the 1970s and 1980s, including Morrissey, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, REM, The Smiths, Bauhaus, Diana Ross, Paul Newman, Björk, and many others. He went on to shoot over 100 music videos for leading artists during MTV’s height in the 1990s, which brought him to the United States.
Young eventually moved to California, where he began his current practice with his sold-out show Pig Portraits in Los Angeles in 2003. The many series that have followed, including his ongoing Heroes + Heroines and WEST, demonstrate his visceral, analog processes and signature use of diamond dust. He has exhibited across the world in numerous galleries alongside masterclass artists, institutions, and cultural figures. These include museum exhibitions at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai, Multimedia Art Museum Moscow, Cornell Art Museum, Polk Museum of Art, and the Goss-Michael Foundation. His genesis NFT debuted and sold on SuperRare in 2022.
Young’s work is included in many prominent private and institutional collections including those of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, David Bowie, Drake, Angelina Jolie, David Hockney, Kayne West, Brad Pitt, and others, as well as The Getty Collection in Los Angeles and The White House Collection in Washington, D.C. His works have crossed the auction block at all of the world’s major auction houses, including Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips.
He currently lives in Southern California.
Website: www.russellyoung.com
Instagram: @bankrobbercalifornia
Twitter: @_russellyoung