Dustin Yellin: Eden Disorder

Dustin Yellin  is living in Brooklyn, New York. He is best known for his sculptural paintings that use multiple layers of glass, each covered in detailed imagery, to create a single intricate, three-dimensional collage. His work is notable both for its massive scale and its fantastic, dystopian themes. Yellin is the founder of Pioneer Works, a non-profit institute for art and innovation in Red Hood, Brooklyn. Yellin draws upon the complexities of organic specimens, splicing and layering intricate biological and anatomical creations, real and invented. Each encapsulated entity comments on the “natural” landscape, genetic experimentation, color and form. Yellin’s detailed auto-stereoscopic volumes are caught in layers of resin or glass and playfully alter the composition of perception. The crux of Yellin’s sculpture is a contradiction: the objects clearly in front of you don’t exist in either space or nature. There is no tree, no skull, no branch, no bone. There is no denying the intricate twists of color, and what you see may not look like any living thing you’ve seen before, but each object is entirely an intelligent design by this talented artist from Brooklyn. Making its debut is a suite of collage-based dimensional sculptures. These new works build upon the established technique of layered drawing that Yellin is known for. Each piece encapsulates a more narrative dimension, layer upon layer of pictorial space bearing an absent context, each segment of collaged imagery selected to build a new story within the glass. The Brooklyn-based artist  was commissioned by the New York City Ballet to install a new series of his figurative collages. The artist refers to the sculptures as Psychogeographies because “they feel like maps of the psyche.” Each large-scale sculpture is individually embellished with bizarre found objects—cut-up books, magazines and trash found on the street—which are then sealed within layers of glass. “Imagine if you were to make a drawing on a window,” said Yellin, explaining his process. “And then you were to take another window and glue it to that window… until you had a window sandwich. I make window sandwiches.” The resulting forms resemble dancers striking various poses: their multi-dimensional bodies encapsulated in suspended animation. A grand total of 15 of these “window sandwiches,” each weighing in at 3,000 pounds each, were installed in the atrium of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center. The installation is on view for all performances through March 1, 2015 but there’s also free public viewing through February 22. If you can’t make it you can always follow Yellin’s activities on Instagram.