David Younglove

 My work is centered on the use of imagery as a means of engagement with perception in relation to nature. My primary guide in navigating this is found within my own heritage where I bring works of classical Persian Poetry and sometimes yet more ancient voices into the contemporary sphere. As the son of an Iranian immigrant my initial motivation was to confront the demonization that middle easterners experience with these holistic messages of love.

 As the band of time that roughly defines ‘contemporary’ seems to be narrowing with increases in informational complexity arriving at an accelerating pace, I have come to view these ancient voices as a means for a more non-linear temporality to take hold. A monodirectional arrow of time mimics the ominous vector of the anthropocene so I feel some sense of urgency in pulling these voices out of the fires of industrial progress. One message from the poetry is that through the intensity of an emotional response to the phenomenology of the natural world, something eternal can be glimpsed. Visually, this takes the form of historic iconography, geometric pattern and natural forms loosely blending into each other. The biomorphic qualities of the patterning shifting between the more fluid natural forms and the rigid mathematical counterparts as figures dance in the haze.