Inspired by Warhol, creating new icons

“The Ghost of

Andy Warhol” ‘ Portraits of the

Alphabet”

Kelly…

“The Ghost of

Andy Warhol” ‘ Portraits of the

Alphabet”

Kelly Young

Ongoing exhibition with

installations changing

My Gallery

5169 Butler Street

(412) 378-2240

In a tiny, one-room gallery in Lawrenceville, there are five very big pieces of art. They’re not big in a colossal, space-cramping sense (though some of the pieces cover considerable wall space.) They’re big in the same sense that a famous poem or short story can be big — they’re big because they’re good.

Kelly Young, a native of Taiwan and a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, explores some interesting installation techniques using multiple surface layers, as well as the idea of the iconic image in his new pieces on display at My*Gallery in Lawrenceville.

Some of Young’s previous work has been compared to that of Andy Warhol, and that prompted the artist to begin researching Warhol and, eventually, make Warhol the subject of his work. Two of the pieces in the show make direct use of Warhol’s image, while another appropriates and alters Warhol’s idea of the icon.

“The Ghost of Andy Warhol,” one of Young’s newest works, is made of two separate, but related, installation pieces. The larger of the two consists of nine 12-by-15-inch panels, spaced a few inches apart, that create a large, square-shaped installation.

Young works in a layering system — painting on gessoed boards and then drilling holes in them through which he attaches dowels. The dowels suspend acrylic panels of the same dimensions about six inches from the gessoed boards. The acrylic sheets are cut (and/or spray-painted in some cases) to create an image surface that is different from the one behind it, yet still transparent enough to allow the image behind it to peek through.

In “The Ghost,” the acrylic panels have been transparently incised with one large portrait of Warhol (spanning the gaps between panels), and the boards behind are oil paintings that say the word “Andy” in bright, Warhol-esque colors. The overall effect, with light shining on the piece at a downward angle, is that the portrait is mysteriously half visible in front of the oil-painted panels.

The eye struggles to organize the levels of the installation, as it is nearly impossible to view both at once because of the fact that the acrylic panels tend to reflect some light and slightly obscure the panels behind them. The result is that Warhol’s face floats in a very ghostlike way — sometimes seeming to be above or on the boards behind it, and sometimes seeming absent entirely — depending on what part of the installation you focus on and where you stand in relation to the light source.

Although Warhol is not so conspicuously present in “Portraits of the Alphabet,” his influence can be felt there, too. This series contains 26 portraits, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each portrait corresponds to the first letter of each subject’s name.

Like in “The Ghost,” the same two-layered technique is used, but here both the oil panel and the acrylic one contain portraits of the sitter. The subject is presented from a different angle on the acrylic surface than it is on the oil panel, for example, one may be a frontal and the other, three-quarters view. In the oil panel, the same bright colors from “The Ghost” are employed, but the sitter’s face is broken up into different color fields corresponding to how the letter of his or her name would divide the board if it were drawn on top of it.

The acrylic panels have spray paint added to the surfaces in order to actually draw, in calligraphy, the appropriate letter corresponding to the portrait, as well as to increase the texture and opacity of the acrylic sheet — again, making it wonderfully difficult to see both portraits of a sitter at the same time from one angle.

You feel a desire to step closer, to peer at each of the 26 faces from a variety of vantage points, to try and see the acrylic, then the oil, and then both panels together. You begin to wonder who these people are. Why have they been chosen to be depicted up close in such vibrant colors and expressions?

In his artist statement concerning “Portraits of the Alphabet,” Young writes, “I’m attempting to create new icons through my work.”

It seems, with this fascinating technique and choice of subjects, Young is on his way to accomplishing his goal with these and his other “big” artworks.