MADDOX GALLERY, GSTAAD
17 DECEMBER - 07 FEBRUARY
‘L.A. was the flame and I was the moth,’ says Russell Young – and right there is the narrative arc of The Glamour Game, with all of its seduction, desire, beauty and danger.
To stand before the works in The Glamour Game is to look deep into the heart of popular culture’s foundation myth. Here are the religious icons of our era, recent enough to belong to us, distant enough to be giants untainted by our ephemeral Instagram civilisation.
That’s where the collection draws such potency: his artworks are parables, seducing us with their siren-like beauty while daring us to look beneath the surface. Grace Kelly’s Hollywood, Kate Moss’s Cool Britannia, Gen-Z’s rebooted Marilyn and Elvis – they all go into Young’s pop-art cocktail shaker to be both celebrated and deconstructed, refracted through a colour palette with the electric energy of punk and new wave.
And what colours they are. Kate Moss is rendered in Love Blue, Hunter Green and Melrose Pink. They might be named after the South London streets where the supermodel grew up, but these are rare pigments. The artist scours the world for them, from the vaults of Florence to the Egyptian desert and the mountains of California. The colours are electrified by diamond dust applied by Young’s master printer in New York.
What’s the result? Artworks that are as rich in symbolism as a Roy Lichtenstein and Richard Hamilton. The diamond dust glints with the seductive sparkle of the fame that enshrouded his subjects. The monochromatic mediums hint at layers hidden from our gaze. They present as dazzling artefacts from a golden age just beyond our grasp. Young is the diarist of our times, chronicling this point in our history where the American Dream – where anyone could become anything – is dissolving into a more uncertain future. These gorgeous capsules of aesthetic perfection reach out to us from across the recent past, urging us to honour our aspirations while reminding us that in the glamour game, dreams come with an edge.
Russell Young, born in 1959 in Yorkshire, is a British-American artist best known for his large scale silk
His earliest breakthrough was his photography of George Michael for the sleeve of the album ‘Faith’ in 1987.
Young eventually moved to California, where he began his current practice with his sold-out show ‘Pig Portraits’ in Los Angeles in 2003. The many series that have followed, including his ongoing ‘Heroes + Heroines’ and ‘WEST’, demonstrate his visceral, analog processes and signature use of diamond dust. He has exhibited across the world in numerous galleries alongside masterclass artists, institutions, and cultural figures. These include museum exhibitions at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai, Multimedia Art Museum Moscow, Cornell Art Museum, Polk Museum of Art, and the Goss-Michael Foundation. His genesis NFT
Young’s work is included in many prominent private and institutional collections including those of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, David Bowie, Drake, Angelina Jolie, David Hockney, Brad Pitt, and others, as well as The Getty Collection in Los Angeles and The White House Collection in Washington, D.C. His works have crossed the auction block at all of the world’s major auction houses, including Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Phillips.
HOLLYWOOD,
'I AM A KEEN OBSERVER OF CELEBRITYSTARS WHO IN FACT HAVE NO PART IN OUR PHYSICAL LIVES BUT NEVERTHELESS SEEP INTO OUR DAY TO DAY CONSCIOUSNESS...'
MARILYN CHANEL,
MARILYN CRYING, 2019 SKY SIREN BLUE ACRYLIC PAINT, ENAMEL AND DIAMOND DUST SCREEN PRINT ON LINEN
MARILYN CRYING, 2019 MISTY PINK ACRYLIC PAINT, ENAMEL AND DIAMOND DUST SCREEN PRINT ON LINEN
MARILYN PORTRAIT CALIFORNIA, 2014
'WE ALL READ BOOKS ABOUT PEOPLE THAT HAVE DONE THINGS, BUT YOU REALLY HAVE TO DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH LIFE. IT'S NOT A REHEARSAL. IT REALLY ISN'T...'
RIDER,
ELIZABETH TAYLOR, 2019
JOHN + YOKO, 2010
DAVID BOWIE
Jackie Kennedy
