Austin Young(I)

Austin Young is a visual artist and film maker who lives and works in Los Angeles. As well as a filmmaker, Austin is has a celebrated career in portrait photography and contemporary art. In many ways, Austin is more accurately described as an image-maker: his projects illustrate the sublime qualities of character that make celebrated people unique. Based on a nuanced visual language of pop-culture iconography, his trademark style and techniques have captured a broad palette of musicians, artists and celebrities including Debbie Harry, Leigh Bowery and Margaret Cho, among others. In multiple bodies of work, Austin confuses personality and identity issues in confrontational and unapologetic image making about people who often split gender roles, stereotypical constraints and socially-constructed identities. Austin is co-founder of Fallen Fruit, a contemporary art collective that uses fruit as a material for projects that investigate the hyper-synergistic qualities of collaboration. Austin Young creates works of art that are transgressive about subjective qualities and emboldens prescribed meaning with an acute focus on honesty and narrative representations of the real.