Living Contemporary  4 March 2020

Brooklyn-based artist Dustin Yellin works in a unique medium. Part drawing, part sculpture, he layers resin or glass with ink, acrylic, or collage, creating otherworldly objects and tableaus suspended in space. Depending on the viewer’s position, the image distorts, disappears, and reappears like a ghostly apparition. The effect is especially powerful when applied to memento mori such as the skull in the current lot. Faced with a representation of something that is quite literally a part of us, we are caught in the empty-socketed gaze of an x-ray vision of our own corporeality. Equal parts mesmerizing and unsettling, Yellin’s work encourages us to meditate on our life by contemplating—and confronting—our mortality.

As I got older, I got more Victorian and morbid. I got into things that circled around death, like skulls or morgue photographs or handwritten diaries. They can be almost haunted with all this history, and you project onto it and then it gets onto you.

Dustin Yellin

Property from a New York Collection

Eclectic and whimsical, this diverse collection was assembled with an eye for aesthetics and features everything from folk art and fine art to industrial ephemera and vintage advertising signs. Among the most unique pieces are a life-size folk art Harley Davidson motorcycle sculpture and a gold-plated Roccanti racing bicycle. Highlights include works by Dustin Yellin, Lowell Nesbitt, Karl Springer, William Kent, and Jesse Howard.

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Dustin Yellin b. 1975

Dustin Yellin was born in California in 1975 and raised in Colorado before establishing his studio in Brooklyn. He started his career, as so many artists do, in painting, but was left unfulfilled by the pursuit. In search of a new creative direction, he began experimenting with resin-coated collages in the early 2000s and over the course of the next two decades would create successively larger and more complex sculptures, eventually switching from resin to glass in the 2010s. In addition to being a successful artist, he is also the founder and director of Pioneer Works, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts center in Brooklyn. A 24,000 square foot space, it houses a museum, studio, concert venue, and rentable space with the goal of fostering a community through both arts and sciences. In the artist’s own words “It’s a university, but it’s a museum and a publishing house and a stage. It’s everything in one”. Yellin’s work has been exhibited worldwide and his most recent pieces focus on the relationship between humanity, fossil fuel dependence, and their effects on our planet.

Auction Results Dustin Yellin

DUSTIN YELLIN, Static White Couple | ragoarts.com

Dustin Yellin

Static White Couple

estimate: $5,000–7,000

result $5,000

DUSTIN YELLIN, Strawberry Skull | ragoarts.com

Dustin Yellin

Strawberry Skull

estimate: $8,000–10,000