Cory Sanderson, Migration in Four Parts
Dustin Yellin, Migration in Four Parts
When I was looking through Yellin’s website and I clicked on the link for this piece, I audibly gasped and knew immediately that my report had to be on it. It is shockingly beautiful and you can tell at first glance that is has to be so full of meaning. The color is remarkable and the light accentuates every detail. All the blue creates an ethereal look and the contrast of all the colors further pushes its beauty. It reminds me of the sea, while also being otherworldly, a better way to depict the world we actually live in.
There is one image created by these boxes, each box flows into the next. The backdrop is a pale blue and the inside of the glass has a highly saturated image. The dominant color is teal with smaller portions of the image including reds and yellows. The image itself is created out of small realistic cutouts of various types of people from various eras traveling in some way. It depicts many forms of transportation, and many types of people, but all so small that you have to look at a closeup to tell.
Migration in Four Parts is composed of glass, collage, acrylic, resin, and steel. The use of resin allows for the collage work to maintain it’s form and the acrylic brings out the color of the things Yellin chose to use in the collage. The glass and steel are critical for the presentation. The glass encapsulates the collage and the steel brings the work much higher up without actually making the piece bigger. By this I mean that there is not more collage, which could potentially look hectic or messy, but it gives the work a bigger presence and more importance. Though glass and steel may not first appear as important because the collage and acrylic are what create the extravagant and complicated image, if they were not there, the difference in the energy and presence the piece would emit is shockingly substantial.
The work relates to the world at large because it is the world at large. Yellin uses moments all across time and shoves them all into one piece. A starving boy holding wood can be seen next to Greek buildings and someone cliff jumping. He created an equality between history. He literally made a collage of human existence and the human experience. Every moment is overlapping and nothing is deemed more important because it is all so scattered. Perhaps he was speaking on the history of discrimination or the unfairness of third world countries still existing while other countries have moved on to much more materialistic ways of life.
This work tells a history of travel and life. There was no discrimination in choosing the people or time period featured in it. There are people of all races, countries, social classes, and eras. The same lack of discrimination was given to the objects included. From primitive wood to cars, bridges, huts, trees, birds, camels, even famous pieces of architecture, everything is included. Yellin’s work is a celebration of life in a way. He took from every moment in history from all across the world and he put it all together in resin to forever maintain it’s beauty and color.