John Young, Spectrumfigure IV, 2017

The Spectrumfigures are produced by a unique process whereby Young downloads a thousand photographic images from the internet daily, algorithms transform these photographic images into abstract images - one will then be chosen from the thousand, and caringly painted up through jurassic but intricate oil painting techniques. It is what Young terms ‘Human-Technology Friendship’ paintings, a hope for the reciprocity between the cerebral strength of technology and the viscerality evoked by oil painting. This ironic title is derived from the name of a German electro-punk band in the 80’s Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (or German-American Friendship).

Are you familiar with John Young? He is a very respected artist based in Australia. John Young’s abstract paintings use the computer to generate thousands of abstract images, he then John goes through the multitude of images like someone walking in a new and unknown landscape. With these very new, unknown images he chooses particular images that communicate with him the most. He then paints the image by hand trying to maintain the a certain exactness to the computer generated image. This painting becomes a new kind of post modern painting that uses the computer as an interface to create a painting making it both objective and subjective. In this painting, he search spectrums of colours and rainbows to try and paint every colour visible to the human eye.

John Young

Cookie preferences

John Young

Exhibitions