Solo Exhibition by Nate Young Opens April 21

An exhibition of work by Nate Young titled (re)collection will go on view at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond on Friday, April 21. A 5:30 p.m. artist talk will be followed by a public reception from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibition runs through June 18.

Young presents an installation that interprets and mythologizes the life of his great-grandfather. A conceptual narrative in three parts, the works on view are inspired by personal recollection, oral history, family relics, and the unearthed bones of the horse that carried Young’s great-grandfather north during the Great Migration.

Young was a Quirk+VisArts artist in residence in March of 2017. He stayed at Quirk’s residency space and worked in VisArts’ studios alongside jewelers Liz Borsetti and Jay Sharpe, woodworker Mark Rickey and printmaker Travis Robertson. Borsetti and Sharpe taught Young a lost wax casting technique, which he is using to create work for the exhibition.

“It was exciting to have Nate here, collaborating with VisArts’ faculty and also learning from them,” said Stefanie Fedor, executive director at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. “This is what we envisioned when we designed the residency program. We wanted to invite artists to Richmond and help them connect with the many talented artists working here.”

In this exhibition, Young brings together the hand-made wooden objects for which he is best known, along with jewelry making, printmaking and a sculptural sound installation made during his residency. Both personally sourced and historically resonant, (re)collection reflects on the ways in which identity is formed through action and circumstance and transformed by archive and memory.

Young lives in Chicago, where he teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He earned an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts in 2009 and a B.A. from Northwestern College in Minnesota in 2004. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009, and was invited back as a dean of the residency in 2015.

Young is represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago and has had solo exhibitions at the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, Penn.; Luce Gallery in Turin, Italy; and Monique Meloche Gallery. He will have another solo exhibition at Monique Meloche Gallery in September 2017. Young has participated in group exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem, N.Y.; California African American Museum in Los Angeles, Calif.; and the Soap Factory’s Minnesota Biennial.

Young is the recipient of the Knight Arts Challenge Fellowship from the Knight Foundation, the Bush Fellowship for Visual Artists and the Jerome Fellowship for Emerging Artists. Young is co-founder and director of the artist-run exhibition space, The Bindery Projects, in Minneapolis, Minn.

Young is the fourth artist to benefit from the Quirk+VisArts Artist-in-Residence Program, a partnership between the Visual Arts Center of Richmond and Quirk Hotel and Gallery. Previous artists in residence include Leigh Suggs, Carli Holcomb and Natasha Bowdoin.

The exhibition is guest curated by Melissa Messina.