Portfolio: Tyler Young

The things that were hard to remember, 2021, copper, acrylic gemstone, sheet acrylic, wood, string, tape, and oil painting on stretched canvas, 25 x 16 x 2 in.

[Image description: A painting in brushy shades of blue, purple, and green. It is divided into a grid and each square has a circle in it. On the left, the painted silhouettes of a cluster of jars are visible, and on the right is an abstract shape that looks like a hand or plant leaf. Geometric metal hardware is affixed to various areas of the painting, from which hangs white and silver yarn. A length of canvas the same colors as the painting dangles like a necklace below the edge of the painting.]

“The idea of understanding oneself is not something that can definitively be captured in one sentence, for you are continually making yourself.” – Tyler Young

The work of jeweler, ceramicist, and mixed media artist Tyler Young entices viewers with its vibrant expressionism and conceptual nature. While Young’s works may initially read as if made solely with the materials available at hand’s grasp, it is clear they were made not by an amateur, but by a methodical, calculated, and simultaneously spontaneous individual. Unhinged and passionate decision-making actively shows face in his pieces. From his spiraling wire frames to the pervasive oil-painted abstractions embossing his jewelry, there is an irony involved in Young’s approach, rooted in its conflicted exploration of identity.

As a second-generation Asian American, Young grapples with a sense of disconnect from his ancestors’ mainlands and culture. In Western societies, minorities often find their identities paired with expectations from various, opposing corners. As Young put it, “To grow up with Western individualist ideals is to be in contrast with the collective cultures and the idea that you don’t just represent yourself, but you represent your family. This presents an odd duality.” Certain ideals stem from one’s own people, possibly with expectations of assimilation into Western culture, but also from Western society itself and its expectation that one should act, in Young’s case, “like an Asian”. These stereotypical notions ultimately discount the fact that Asian American culture, after years of assimilation, indoctrination, naturalization, and endless change, has become a culture in and of itself. 

Young’s abstract expressionist tendencies are rooted in this very battle for identity and liberation from a society that wishes to dictate his self-identification. Taking inspiration from the likes of Robert Rauschenberg and Mark Bradford, Young has long experimented with mixed media to explore these concerns and now drifts into his own world of jewelry-making and ceramics, with an intention to dismantle the boundaries erected by traditional form. Young’s education in philosophy— existentialism, in particular— guides his line of questioning when it comes to searching for patterns and codes in his artmaking process. While he sticks to a set of rules, they are rules that he creates for himself.

Materials like gold or platinum are, to Young, no greater in value than copper or acrylic. In turn, fine art is no greater in value than jewelry, according to his schema. He holds no inherent antipathy towards the materials and forms themselves, but rather toward the hierarchy society creates when it states that one is inherently worth less than another. As an artist working in abstraction, Young feels a duty to break away from such rules and embrace post-modernist ideals of deconstruction in order to return quality and appreciation to that which has been deprived of it. To continue deconstructing is to continue experimenting, and therefore never settle into a singular medium, singular identity, or singular belief— all traits Tyler Young possesses and wholeheartedly implements in his vast array of work.

— Bilal Mohamed, writer and artist

Untitled Ring, 2021, Cone 6 Stoneware, crawl glazes, iron stains, acrylic gem, copper, and brass, 2.5 x 2.5 x 1.5 in.

[Image description: A hand with medium-light skin wears a large ring on its middle finger. The ring is a diamond-shaped flat surface covered in a crackled brown and yellow substance. In the top corner, a blue gem is set on a deep red surface.]

Wooden Necklace, 2020, wood, fabric, acrylic paint, copper, and string, 23 x 17 x 1 in.

[Image description: A wood structure— lightly painted in white and yellow— in the shape of a frame. A section in the center of the top bar is missing, and the two ends are linked by a chain, fastened with bronze hardware. White string is wrapped around the frame’s top right corner. From the bottom left corner hang two small metal piece, tied on with white string.]

Hydration, 2021, Cone 6 Stoneware, crawl glazes, iron stains, and underglaze, 7 x 5.5 x 1 in.

[Image description: A rectangular white slab of ceramic with an uneven bottom edge. The surface bears brushy marks in blue, black, yellow, and orange, with some crackled texture applied. There are three holes cut through: two at the top and one at the bottom. The hole at the top left and the one at the bottom have a lip around them that projects out from the surface.]

Badges, 2019, brass, overglaze, and enameled copper, 9 x 8 x .5 in. 

[Image description: Two circular objects placed side by side, connected by a low-hanging chain. The object on the left is a circle painted in red and blue, affixed on top of a thin, rectangular metal frame. The object on the right is a crumpled rectangle, painted in blue and orange, affixed to a thin, circular metal frame.]

Makeshift Connections, 2021, wood, copper, string, and acrylic and oil painting on canvas, 16 x 12 x 1.5 in. 

[Image descriptions: A brushy abstract painting in yellow, gray, orange, and black. A large arc of black paint is placed prominently in the upper left. Below it, the canvas appears to come off the painting’s wooden frame, and is built up into three dimensions with elements in wood, metal, and glass. Pieces of yarn hang and connect two intricate objects that look partly like jewelry and partly like machinery.] 

The times when we pretended things were normal, 2020, wood, copper, string, and oil painting on canvas, 17 x 14 x .5 in. 

[Image descriptions: Two entwined lengths of yarn, one white and one silver, are hung from a single point. On the end of each side hang pieces of cobbled-together wood, newspaper, canvas, and metal. They look simultaneously dirty and delicately refined.]

Odd One Out, 2020, Cone 6 Stoneware, copper, wood, tape, and oil painting on stretched canvas, 12 x 16 x 3 in.

[Image description: A loose, brushy painting of a still life with three vessels in yellow, black, blue, brown, pink and white. Toward the right side is a three-dimensional element that looks partly like a vessel and partly like a section of human spine. Wrapped around what would be the vessel’s handle is a length of white yarn, a loop of which hangs down past the painting’s edge.]

Torn, 2021, Cone 6 Stoneware, crawl glazes, iron stains, underglaze, and found objects, 14 x 7 x 1 in.

[Image description: A rectangular white ceramic slab with a horizontal slice extending almost entirely through its middle. Decorated with thin yellow and black glaze in parts, the surface bears logs of crackled material, circle markings, and one circular cutout in the top left corner. Through that hole is threaded a ball chain necklace with a plastic mushroom charm on it.]

Asexual Dreams, 2021, copper, wood, tape, and oil painting on stretched canvas, 12 x 12 x 3 in.

[Image descriptions: A painted still life— featuring a piece of cake and an ice cream sunday— on a gridded field of purple, blue, green, and black. On the right are two metal sculptural elements. At the top is a curved form, like a bridge, and extending beneath it is a shape that looks like the outline of a cartoon hand or plant leaf. The whole work is tilted askew against the white background.]