There’s been a lot of hand-wringing lately about how contemporary art has lost its edge. You may have heard that the field is in a state of aimlessness. It’s uninspired. It’s backward-looking. The 30 artists on CULTURED’s ninth annual Young Artists list offer a powerful rejoinder to this idea. Their work is bursting with idiosyncrasy, curiosity, and gumption—all necessary ingredients for great art.
On the surface, this group has little in common beyond national affiliation (all live or work in the United States), age (all are 35 or under), and vocation. They work in media ranging from robotics to photography to textiles, and draw from sources of inspiration as disparate as video games, family heirlooms, and the New York subway system. They are based up and down the East and West Coast, as well as a few places in between (two of them live in Oklahoma).
Look a little closer, however, and you’ll find some telling convergences. A number of artists on this list are interested in kindred themes, like the allure and trap of domesticity, the mind-expanding potential of science fiction, and the simplistic and sometimes distorted histories we are taught.
It is also notable that this class of Young Artists is, to some extent, a product of the pandemic. Many of them spent formative years—whether in art school or as freshly hatched professionals—in lockdown. At home in Chicago, Isabelle Frances McGuire taught themself to code and changed the trajectory of their work in the process; in Baltimore, Charles Mason III painted and drew his way through isolation, refining his artistic language along the way.
We have only just begun to consider how this chapter has and will continue to shape the rising generation of artists. But it is fair to say that, after the crucible of the past few years, they have come out the other side alert and even emboldened. Now, the ball is in the art world’s court to make space for them to thrive.
—Julia Halperin
