Jason Young was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1969, and is now based in New York City. He has a wide range of expertise but currently creates works of resin that subvert traditional notions of painting. He takes inspiration from Minimalistic Color Field, West Coast paintings of the 80s, and the philosophy behind the French art movement Supports/Surfaces, where he strips away traditional conventions to explore art's essence and its interaction with its environment. This dedication to deconstructing and reinterpreting the boundaries of painting underscores Young's commitment to a continually evolving dialogue between art and society.

Early Years + Education

Jason Young was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1969. At the young age of sixteen, Young attended the multi-disciplinary art program of the Cleveland Institute of Fine Arts in the village of Lacoste, south of France followed by the School of Fine Arts in Los Angeles, at the University of Southern California. To complete his “classical” fine art education, Young went back to France in 1990 to study at the Sorbonne while apprenticing to the world-famous Russian artist Yuri Kuper at his ateliers in Normandy and Paris. There, Young learned to paint in the highly realistic figurative style of “trompe-l’oeuil” for which Mr. Kuper was so famous. Rounding out his art education, Young immersed himself in the more contemporary and conceptual side of the art world at the Institute des Hautes Etudes en Arts Plastiques in Paris. Young was one of only twenty artists who were offered a full scholarship to study under the founding curator of the Beaubourg and Moderna Museet, Pontus Hulten, and world-famous artists Daniel Buren and Sarkis. 

Early Career

Even though Young stayed in Paris, he was awarded solo and group shows in Los Angeles, and his hometown Vancouver. He quickly gained representation at the James Corcoran Gallery in Santa Monica, the Cristinerose Gallery in New York, and the Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver, immediately after his education. Young continued to develop his style and was quickly recognized by his peers as being one of only a handful of artists to pioneer the new medium of resin painting. In 1994 Young moved to New York where he resides today. At the same time, Young began showing more internationally, with Solo shows in Milan, London, Turin, Tenerife, and Seoul. He also gained representation at Thomas Soloman’s Garage in L.A., Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto, and Clifford Smith Gallery in Boston. Spurned on by favorable reviews in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Art in America, Young’s style and use of materials became even more intricate and daring. Young used various resins and metals to create a mercurial mutated medium that transformed his traditional art training into a form of high-tech minimal “trompe-l’oeuil". 

Working in both painting and sculpture, Young began being included in more museum shows such as Paintings that Paint Themselves in Detroit and Materiality at the Kresge Museum. His painting Gunmetal Tap was chosen out of 68 artists works for the invitation and the catalogue cover for the Tucson Museum of Art show Paint On Metal which included the works of Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, John Baldessari, John Chamberlain, and Alexander Calder, to name a few. 

Current Career

Today, Young’s work is part of major international collections including the Four Seasons Group, Hewlett Packard, Progressive Insurance, The Tuscan Museum of Art, and the Kresqe Museum of Art. His work can also be found as permanent installations in the lobbies of Robert AM Stern buildings in NY, the Ritz Carlton-NY Battery Park, The Mandarin Oriental-Riviera Maya in Mexico, and the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. Inspired by the showing of his sculptures, paintings, and film at Arcaute Arte Contemporaneo in Monterrey, Mexico, his work has recently evolved into a sort of performance of sculptures that paint. The first example has materialized in his first short film with director Pascal Franchot titled The Curling Stones. In 2012, Young performed The Curling Stones in a live show entitled 2054 on the rooftop of the Soho House in New York City. 

Currently, Young resides in New York City and continuously works on commission pieces and pieces for his own pleasure. He is constantly experimenting and pushing the boundaries of his chosen materials, experimenting and developing each piece more than the last.