STAGES

Dustin Yellin

Existing in a genre-defying netherworld between the narrow classifications of “painter” and “sculptor,” Brooklyn-based Dustin Yellin creates unique hybrid works that might be best described as “3-D paintings.” Inspired years ago by the plight of a bee that became trapped on the wet surface of an unfinished resin-based collage, Yellin went on to develop what would become his signature style of highly detailed renderings of flora, fauna, and even abstract forms suspended in silent tombs of clear resin, much like prehistoric insects trapped in ancient amber—albeit with their guts turned inside-out for all the world to marvel at.

With the patience of a monk (or as he puts it, “a gardener”), Yellin builds up these suspended animations layer by painstaking layer, with each one typically requiring a day’s work to complete. Often employing MRI scans as source material, the artist achieves a seemingly impossible level of detail, rendering central nervous and circulatory systems with the technique of a higher power, drawing and painting on thin sheets of freshly poured resin before adding the next until the image appears in all its lifelike, free-standing glory. Filtering light from all angles, Yellin’s finished pieces are both luminous in their ghostly beauty and daunting in their sheer technical virtuosity.

If Ink Were Blood (Man and Woman)

Dustin Yellin Resin, acrylic, and ink, 182cm x 60cm x 34cm.

Regarding his twin life-size sculptures for STAGES, the artist explains, “As a neurotic OCD maniac, I am always thinking about the temporality of our existence and the fleeting breath of consciousness we inhabit. The man and woman represent the incomprehensible biological ingenuity that compose the human machine. As time passes, mutations occur, and one can only imagine what the human form will look like in 1,000,000 years. This couple represents and deconstructs the human form from the inside out. It brings the delicate tissues and circulations to the foreground of a bodily representation. They are testaments to the collective scientific vision and understanding of the human body. To cure cancer is to understand this beautiful machine.”