AARON YOUNG: No Fucking Way May 11 – June 23, 2012 Opening reception, Friday May 11, 6-8PM The Company is pleased to announce Aaron Young’s Los Angeles exhibition, No Fucking Way, on view from May 11 – June 23. Aaron Young’s work can be described in extremes. He appropriates symbols associated with American freedom in the form of motorcycles, muscle cars, and the Flag, as well as its dark underbelly – barricades, barbed wire, and xenophobia (Locals Only!). His most noted work, the performative motorcycle burnouts, are s... Read more

AARON YOUNG: No Fucking Way
May 11 – June 23, 2012
Opening reception, Friday May 11, 6-8PM

The Company is pleased to announce Aaron Young’s Los Angeles exhibition, No Fucking Way, on view from
May 11 – June 23.

Aaron Young’s work can be described in extremes. He appropriates symbols associated with American
freedom in the form of motorcycles, muscle cars, and the Flag, as well as its dark underbelly – barricades,
barbed wire, and xenophobia (Locals Only!). His most noted work, the performative motorcycle burnouts,
are spectacles that serve to reveal what lies beneath the surface while simultaneously erasing the evidence.
The grandiose gestures are then reduced to minimal, abstract, sometimes monochromatic results. Although
spectacle surrounds Young, most of his performances are completed with very few witnesses.

In the current exhibition, No Fucking Way, six new paintings depict Internet and magazine sourced portraits
of tabloid sensations: Casey Anthony, Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Knox, Jessica Simpson, Heidi Montag, and
the skating rivals Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. The women obligingly pose with the American flag in
some form – either wrapped in it, dangling from their mouth, or worn as a bikini.

The linen canvases are shaped to resemble large three-pointed folded flags, painted in saccharine pink,
and flecked with textured circles that reveal the entirety of the image when standing at a distance. These
portraits are an amalgamation of previous works of flags from his 2011 New York exhibition, BUILT TOUGH
and Young’s “Jesus” paintings (Focus On The Four Dots In The Middle Of The Painting For Thirty Seconds,
Close Your Eyes And Tilt Your Head Back). But the works that comprise No Fucking Way are a departure
from the male-centric iconography of those previous, as well as a major shift into celebrity psyche and
pathology.

By placing infamous Court TV hotties along side troubled Hollywood starlets, Young has managed to
collapse what constitutes an “actress” – those who choose to perform for a living and those who must
perform to save their lives. In the most extreme case, 30 Days, a portrait of Casey Anthony, the mother of a
missing 2-year-old, poses for a snapshot as she dances at a party, seemingly carefree. In another, Over the
Hills, Heidi Montag in a bikini, a snapshot taken soon after undergoing 10 plastic surgeries in one day.

The halftoning effect Young implements evoke mass media and over-saturation, which has become the
vernacular of how we absorb these images. This blurring of real and constructed, only existing in the realm
of performance, speculation and judgment, implicates the viewer in its consumption, since our observation of
these celebrities will always be mediated.

Young will also be participating in the MoCA organized Rebel show, on view from May 15-June 23 in West
Hollywood.

Aaron Young was born in 1972 in San Francisco California. He graduated from the San Francisco Art
Institute in 2001, and received his Masters of Fine Art from Yale University in 2004. His work has been
exhibited internationally at Macro (Museo di Arte Contemporanea) in Rome, Italy; Teatro di Marcello, in
Rome, Italy; as well as performances in Moscow, Naples and New York City. His work has been included
in the “Greater New York,” MoMA/PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City; “Uncertain States of
America” Astrup Fearnley Museum of Art, Oslo (traveled to Bard’s Center for Curatorial Studies, Annandale-
on-Hudson, NY, and Serpentine Gallery, London); The 2006 Whitney Biennial “Day for Night”, the Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York and The 2nd Moscow Biennial for Contemporary Art, Moscow; The Andy
Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, PA. His work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Astrup Fearnley Museum for Modern Kunst and the Jumex Collection. He lives and works in New York City.