SOUL UNDER GLASS NOW

As we walk, we often pick up bits and pieces of the places we pass through. Leaves, pebbles, seashells, bits of paper, clippings, nuggets of sea glass, seed pods… things that catch our eyes and hearts in a way that beg to be remembered. There’s a name for this pastime: Psychogeography.

 

DUSTIN YELLIN

Sometimes we are inspired to create collages out of our gatherings. Artist Dustin Yellin kicked that method up into a whole new dimension with his 3D glass collage sculptures in a recently launched series, entitled Psychogeographies. They are massive, in both stature and impact.

The Brooklyn-based artist, paints and affixes his findings in intricate compositions between multiple layers of glass, which, when stacked, create a single intricate, three-dimensional sculpture.

When viewed from a distance, we marvel at each whole sculpture -- a giant glass block with an ethereal image at its core. Upon closer inspection we find the pieces of Yellin’s consciousness -- bizarre found objects and clippings -- everything from flower arrangements to dead mice to eccentric images cut from magazines.

Figures appear as ephemeral, as if we are viewing souls vs. bodies or landscapes. They are as if frozen in time -- in ice perhaps -- their spirits caught in a passing moment. They evoke Damien Hirst’s specimens floating in formaldehyde filled glass cubes.

Yellin calls his pieces “sculptural paintings.” The bits of life collected and presented are meant to also serve as “roadmaps for future generations.”

When he first explored this theme, he created his pieces with resin, pouring it on his collage pieces. But after becoming concerned about the health risks work this medium, he began to experiment with glass, developing this layered technique to execute his vision.

While on one hand the figures in the Psychogeographies series are autobiographical, because they contain things that Yellin came across within his own life journey, they are things that once belonged to others. So, they really represent a communal biography -- a collective unconsciousness.

“The universe and the mind are shadowy places seething with dark magic, seas of boundless depth and possibility, seething with joy and disaster,” says Yellin.

Psychogeography 43 looks like a figure trying to push out of its frozen trap -- perhaps out of its past and into its future.

Psychogeography 8 looks like a figure whose mind and body has exploded. We see it as joy.  

Psychogeography 38 is made up only of tiny dabs of paint. It is the most ghostly vision of his series.

Sensorium looks like an aquarium at first blush, with a beautiful seascape in one view, made of paper cutouts of human figures, trees, rocks, grass, and painted plumes of smoke and bubbles. Look at it from the other side, and you see a whole other “underwater” image.

The Triptych, Yellin’s largest piece, depicts a the Hurricane Sandy flood and its aftermath. The piece weighs an astonishing 24,000 lbs.

In 2010, Yellin founded Pioneer Works. He calls it a social sculpture.

Yellin and his assistants work out of a converted brick warehouse space in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a studio linked to Pioneer Works Center for Arts, which Yellin founded for the local creative community.

Similar to MoMA PS1, Pioneer Works is a vibrant part of the New York art scene, and a model for experimental and collaborative creative practices. The center is dedicated to the creation, synthesis and discussion of art, science and education.

Through a community devoted to creative discourse and collaboration, Pioneer Works is a platform where ideas can manifest into their fullest expression. Part museum, part school laboratory you see art, both in process and on display. There is both science and art happening here.

Painters paint while astrophysicists check out the sky through the massive telescope here. It is a creative petri dish -- mixing ideas and visions to form new ones. It is an amazing creative community.

Also, check out Yellin’s magazine Intercourse, published twice a year.

Read more about Beautiful Glass, as they relate to Arts/Design, Nature/Science, Food/Drink, Place/Time, Mind/Body, and Soul/Impact including 10 Beautiful Glass Books Now, The Universe in an Orb of Glass -- Now, 10 Fine Art Glass Finds for Fine Dining Now, Astonishing Glass Art Happening Right Now, Versailles Transformed by Beautiful Glass Now and Deadly Beauty Now.

Enter your own images and ideas about Beautiful Glass in this week’s creative Photo Competition. Open for entries now until 11:59 p.m. PT on 10.11.14. If you are reading this after that date, check out the current BN Creative Competition, and enter!

PHOTO CREDITS:

1. Image: by BeautifulNow. Composite of Dustin Yellin’s 3D glass collage sculptures.
2. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Untitled Small Figure 7.
3. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Psychogeography 41.
4. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Psychogeography 39.
5. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Psychogeography 37.
6. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Psychogeography 13.
7. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Psychogeography 45.
8. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Psychogeography 45 close up.
9. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Psychogeography 42.
10. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Psychogeography 43.
11. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Psychogeography 8.
12. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Psychogeography 38.
13. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Sensorium.
14. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. The Triptych.
15. Photo: by Taylor Nelson. Pioneer Works Main Hall.
16. Photo: Courtesy of David Deng. Psychogeography series.
17. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin and Mishi Nonoo. Nonoo and Yellin collaboration.
18. Photo: Courtesy of David Deng. Psychogeography 42 close up.
19. Photo: Courtesy of Pioneer Works. Intercourse Magazine.
20. Photo: Courtesy of Dustin Yellin. Untitled.