Maker’s Medium: Nico Young uses sculpture to find significance in life’s mundanity
Fourth-year art student Nico Young has been making art since high school. Although he started with photojournalism, Young's work has moved towards sculpture that emphasizes metaphor, storytelling, and documentation.
"Nico Young looks to find meaning in the mundane.
Young's sculpture “Yellow Railroad Buffer Stop (2020)” comments on the fragility of all systems, even if they are rigorously engineered. (Courtesy of Nico Young) With an initial interest in photojournalism, Young has ventured into sculpture and said he practices documentation, storytelling and metaphor in his art. Young began making art in high school, with early work including a photo project with The New York Times Magazine. Currently a fourth-year art student, Young also minors in geography as inspired by his interest in trade and urbanism. His study of urbanism manifests in “Yellow Railroad Buffer Stop (2020),” a sculpture Young said he made in January 2020 while studying railroad infrastructure. A buffer stop is a safety measure in place to stop a train if it cannot be stopped any other way, a reminder that all systems – no matter how rigorously engineered – remain fragile, he said.
“It became so much more interesting a few months later when the quarantine happened,” Young said. “It’s funny how I was thinking about (how) systems that we trust so much are liable to failure, and the pandemic … became the most clear example of that.”"— David Egan, Feb. 12 2021
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Daily Bruin website.
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