Available for purchase - email brianyounglee at gmail.com
this piece is titled - maybe not forever but at least for now, because it feels more clever / commercial than i want it to, although i guess it is authentic to myself and my history so maybe the name stays: Second Nature no. 1 - for a lot of reasons but primarily because it's design is something that was born mostly of instinct. The design of the leafy/petal-y laser cut brass itself is an evolution of a type of design that i would sketch endlessly back in middle and high school before cellphones robbed us of our idle seconds, minutes, and hours that we once had to ourselves and our immediate physical and mental confines. However, those previous grade school age doodles were completely abstract. For this piece and more recent work, I feel compelled to evoke something more naturalistic, not so apart from the natural environment that I am always fascinated by, hypnotized by, trying to just - figure out - and am in love with. So, it's a hybrid.
Second to the formal design itself is the materials and construction. I have been an industrial designer and sufferer of product-lust for a long time. Those things don't just disappear when you become an artist. Commercialism is part of my history. I chose my first industrial design career path during the ascendance of ieverything. When apple/steve jobs/jony ive grabbed hold of the eyes and pocketbooks of everyone in the developed world with super expensive, super precisely and expertly designed and executed products. I'm attracted to smooth surfaces, shiny metal, and precision. I've been told I have a thing about perfection. I'm attracted to it, and cant help but attempt to make it. So that's probably why when covid-19 shut the world down and I had a mandate to just make - something - I couldn't help but make something from super shiny polished brass with smooth curves over nice flat black steel and precise little stainless steel standoffs. It's art made by a sculptor that spent the last couple of decades being deeply intertwined with and seduced by mass market products.
Eventually I came to realize that I don't want my life to be wholly spent in the service of the commercial, and that action was necessary. So I set out to learn the skills needed to make big sculptures. I learned metal. I've got a lot more to learn still, but I've gotten to know it well enough to make this piece happen when I had to make something happen. It was "second nature."
