Andrew Young: Sky and Shade

Holly Johnson Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Sky and Shade, an exhibition of recent collages by Andrew Young.  A reception for the artist will be held Friday, March 30, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. The exhibition continues through May 5, 2007.

Andrew Young’s collages express a passion for nature, science, and history.  Serving as an emotional mapping of his life, the works are underscored by a sense of time and a longing for universal connectedness. He expresses a curiosity about the intersection between art and science by investigating centuries of image making and classification, melding past perspectives with the present. His observation is that within any description, be it abstract geometric or representational, the essence of nature is always there. However, by engaging a quest for a lost sensibility through identification and ordering, Young recognizes the paradox that by trying to define nature we, at times, defy our ability to understand it. Though humankind may never find the answers, the beautiful and contemporary inquiries in the art of Andrew Young make the effort all the richer. 

His proclivity for esoteric methods and materials is rigorous, as is his obvious devotion to construction. The execution of these intimate works involves staining cotton and rice papers - painting them with watercolor, gouache, and hand-ground mineral pigments.  He also occasionally incorporates found photographs, stamps, and postcards in the work, while adding additional texture by sanding and scraping the surfaces.

Andrew Young was born in Mt. Kisco, New York in 1962. He studied biology and art history at the University of California-Berkeley and earned a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, in 1987. His interest in science furthered his affinity for natural history, philosophy, and art which eventually led him to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned an M.F.A. in painting in 1989. He has received many grants and awards from both the Community Arts Assistance Program of the City of Chicago and the Illinois Arts Council and in 2001 received a highly regarded prize from the Biennale Internazionale Dell’Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy.

Young’s work is represented by several galleries and has been featured in numerous national and international exhibitions (New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Germany, Italy, and Hungary). He has lectured and taught workshops in Pakistan, Germany, Ecuador and throughout the U.S. His works are in many museum and corporate collections, and recently he received a commission for four works for the Chicago Public Library. Since 1986, articles about the work have been published in noteworthy publications such as; The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, ARTnews, Art & Antiques, Artweek, Art in America, Artforum, Art Issues, New Art Examiner, and many others.  The artist lives and works in Chicago, Illinois.