New York-based artist Aaron Young is best known for his vast September 2007 spectacle of an art installation ‘Greeting Card’, where Young used his loudest brushes to date and orchestrated motorcyclists to burnout over painted wooden panels in the Park Avenue Armory...


Original Performance of ‘Greeting Card’ recorded by Art Observed

Inspired by Jackson Pollock (’Greeting Card’ is also a title of a Pollack painting), the foundation of the performance consisted of 288 panels, forming a 72-by-128-foot surface, coated with multiple layers of fluorescent paint. A dozen bikers wheeled, skidded and spun their heavy machines, burning circular lines through the top layer over black paint to expose the colored layers beneath.


'Greeting Card' - finished painting

Young counts Chris Burden (who famously had a friend shoot him in the upper arm and crucified himself face up to a VW Beetle) as a heavy influence and sees his art as an "assault on the senses". With almost ten minutes of dense smoke and noise, 'Greeting Card' slots effortlessly into that description.



Chris Burden, Transfixed, 23 April 1974, Speedway Avenue, Venice, California

After 'Greeting Card' was dismantled, the 288 panels were divided into separate paintings, ranging from one panel - 150 panels in size. Young just had his first solo show, ‘Introducing Aaron Young', in Paris at the Galerie Almine Rech.


Exhibition view with "Tumbleweed" (crushed fence) , Gallery Almine Rech, Paris, 8 apr - 6 jun 2009


Arc Light - 2008, Oil, rubber, acrylic on aluminium, 150 x 200 cm


Arc Light - Moscow Diptych, Oil, rubber, acrylic on aluminium, 200 x 300 cm


‘Smoke Flows in All Directions’

Link: Galerie Almine Rech, Paris

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