Jason Young was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1969. At the young age of sixteen, Young attended the prestigious art program of the Cleveland Institute of Fine Arts in France followed by the School of Fine Arts in Los Angeles, at the University of Southern California. To complete his “classical” fine art education Young went back to France in 1990 to study at the Sorbonne while apprenticing to the world famous Russian artist Yuri Kuper at his ateliers in Normandy and Paris. There, Young learned to paint in the highly realistic figurative style of “trompe-l’oeuil” for which Mr. Kuper was so famous. Rounding out his art education, Young immersed himself in the more contemporary and conceptual side of the art world at the Institute des Hautes Etudes en Arts Plastiques in Paris. Young was one of only twenty artists who were offered a full scholarship to study under the founding curator of the Beaubourg and Moderna Museet, Pontus Hulten and world famous artists Daniel Buren and Sarkis.
Immediately after his education, even though Young stayed in Paris, he was awarded solo and group shows in Los Angeles, and his hometown Vancouver. He quickly gained representation at the James Corcoran Gallery in Santa Monica, Cristinerose Gallery in New York, and the Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver. Young continued to develop his own style and was quickly recognized by his peers as being one of only a handful of artists to pioneer the new medium of resin painting.
In 1994 Young moved to New York where he resides today. At the same time, Young began showing more internationally, with Solo shows in Milan, Spain, and Korea. He also gained representation at Thomas Soloman’s Garage in L.A.,. Christopher Cutts Gallery in Toronto, and Clifford Smith Gallery in Boston and Galeria Leyendecker in Spain.
Spurned on by favorable reviews in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Art in America, Young’s style and use of materials became even more intricate and daring. Young used various resins and metals to create mercurial mutated medium that transformed his traditional art training into a form of high-tech minimal “trompe-l’oeuil". Working in both painting and sculpture, Young began being included in more and more museum shows such as Paintings that Paint Themselves in Detroit and Materiality at the Kresge Museum. His painting Gunmetal Tap was chosen out of 68 artists works for the invitation and the catalogue cover for the Tucson Museum of Art show Paint On Metal which included the works of Frank Stella, Robert Raushenberg, John Baldessari, John Chamberlain, and Alexander Calder, to name a few.
Today, Young’s work is part of major international collections including the Four Season’s Group, Hewlett Packard, Progressive Insurance, The Tuscan Museum of Art and the Kresqe Museum of Art. His work can also be found as permanent installations in the lobbies of Robert AM Stern buildings in NY, the Ritz Carlton-NY Battery Park, The Mandarin Oriental-Riviera Maya in Mexico and the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills.
Inspired by the showing of his sculptures, paintings and film at Arcaute Arte Contemporaneo in Monterrey, Mexico, his work has recently evolved into a sort of performance of sculptures that paint. The first example has materialized in his first short film with director Pascal Franchot titled The Curling Stones.