When Nina Young introduced me to her work, my first thought was that it makes a good companion project to Miska Draskoczy’s Gowanus Wild, featured recently. Both artists inspect the contaminated industrial environment of areas in Brooklyn, New York, and its overtaking of nature. Young’s pictures contain bits of hope or signs of nature’s resilience, and there is a playful quality to them that I admire. I enjoy almost having to take a second to find the industrial element in each landscape, or to realize what is off in these depictions of fields and plants and pools of water.
From the artist’s statement: “Still Time” consists of photographs of brownfields: contaminated or abandoned land areas that must undergo environmental clean-up before they can be used again. I am driven to find whatever signs of the natural environment are left at these sites and include them in my photographs. I call this work “Still Time” because I seek to inject stillness and a greater sense of space and possibility into these areas. Perhaps there is still time for these places to be vibrant. To borrow from C.G. Jung, I hope to “uncover the potentiality of life which has been overgrown by civilization.”
From “Still Time”
Visit artist's site: ninasyoung.com
Posted September 11th, 2017
