Press Releases

March 7, 1996
NATIVE AMERICAN ART SEARCHES FOR CULTURAL IDENTITY: PHIL YOUNG AT Southampton Graduate Campus

Contact: Virginia Bennett
(516) 287-8313
Fax: (516)283-4081

Reconnections, an exhibition of works by artist Phil Young, will be on view in the Southampton Fine Arts Gallery April 1 - 30. A gallery reception is scheduled Thursday, April 18, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. in the Avram Family Gallery.

Young, an artist of Cherokee, Irish, and Scottish descent, draws upon his native worldview and emotionally painful history in an attempt to "weave broken threads of his family's history back together." His work reflects both his search for cultural identity and his personal struggle to cut through the myths that surround and distort the lives and histories of native peoples. The "desecration and vandalism" of the land because of "greed and progress" are his major themes.

Young symbolically vandalizes his work on paper through the use of harsh scratches that reveal the light colors beneath. The choice of colors, vivid reds, oranges, browns, and gold, deliberately underlines the vandalism not only of the land but the people. He said, "This work is brutal, painful, as I cut through these layers... like being at a fiery communication site, purging... with smoke that first irritate and blinds, then cleanses sight/site."

Intensely political, Young attempts to expose, resist, and bury the ideology embedded in the trading post as well as chain stores and boutiques involving Native Americans. "I reject sentimentality in favor of satiric humor and indignant anger in an attempt to unmask and break open the truth," Young stated.

An only child, Young was born in 1947 in an area of rural Oklahoma known in 1838 as Indian Territory. He was the first child in his family to attend college and graduated Cum Laude in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. His M.F.A. is from American University. He now lives in Oneonta, N.Y., where he is an Associate Professor of Art at Hartwick College.

Young's work has been shown in numerous exhibitions throughout the country including the Native American Film Festival at the Furman Gallery in Lincoln Center, N.Y., the Susquehanna Art Museum in Harrisburg, PA., Renee Fotouhi Fine Art East in East Hampton, N.Y., the American Indian Contemporary Arts Gallery in San Francisco, and the Center of Contemporary Arts in Seattle, WA.

The Fine Arts Gallery at Long Island University's Southampton Graduate Campus is open to the public Monday through Friday, noon to 5 p.m., and by appointment. For further information call Beth Giles in the Fine Arts Center at (516) 287-8427.