Concealment and Law in the Work of Carey Young

Carey Young’s art projects–invoking legal language and procedures–highlight the connection between law and visual culture without divorcing themselves from art historical discourses. Young’s work revolves around the role of categorization, narrative, and rhetorical/linguistic contestations. In particular, Young’s work seeks to elucidate how these three modes of linguistic production function not only within legal frameworks, but also how they in turn frame and are framed by other cultural discourses.

(Disclaimer series as installed at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2004). Image courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York)

As one example, Young’s Disclaimer series, Disclaimer: Ontology, Disclaimer: Access, and Disclaimer: Value, consists of three medium-sized white panels containing language that directly stipulate, and thus categorize, the legal relationship between artist and collector, and between artist and cultural institution. Reminiscent of Joseph Kosuth’s early work, Art as Idea as Idea, where Kosuth directly represents and defines the characteristics inherent in the artwork, and Ashley Bickerton’s self-referential wall sculptures from the late ’80s, Young’s Disclaimer series warn viewers and potential collectors of implied assumptions inherent in a work of art.

(Carey Young/Massimo Sterpi, Disclaimer: Value, 2004. Image courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.)

(Ashley Bickerton, Tormented Self-Portrait (Susie at Arles), 1987-88)

(Joseph Kosuth, Art as Idea as Idea, Nothing, 1967)

Although Kosuth and Bickerton’s strategies are also present in Young’s work, the main issue raised in the Disclaimer series is the question of legality, particularly as it applies to the “warranties” stipulated by Young. In Disclaimer: Value, the stipulation, “The artist does not guarantee that this piece can be sold as a work of art” clearly indicates that this particular (art) object, if sold, should not necessarily be bought with the assumption that it is an artwork or that it contains artistic or monetary value. The “piece” can be bought, but may be bought as an object with multiple uses, none of which may relate in any which way to art or an art object. In fact, Young is ridding herself of any complaints that could be made by her gallery representatives that the work is not apt for sale as a “work of art.” Simultaneously, Young dispenses with any potential critical claims that what she is producing and selling is not art or worthy of being seen or valued as art. Pushing Frank Stella’s famous epigram one step further, Young warns, “What you buy is what you buy.”

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