Aaron Young is an American Contemporary artist born in 1972 in San Francisco. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from San Francisco Art Institute in 2001, and a Master of Fine Arts from Yale School of Art in 2004.

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Aaron Young’s artworks rely on the aftereffects of dynamic, energetic, and sometimes even dangerous performances. He hires participants stereotyped as marginalized rebels, such as skateboarders and motorcycle riders, to perform various stunts in exhibition spaces on specially prepared platforms, such as the performance Arc Light, 2008. Like Steven Parrino, Young uses destructive actions as generative force, the traces of his ephemeral acts are recorded as videos, drawings, sculptures, and photographs to constitute artistic artifacts. In Arc Light, Young takes Robert Rauschenberg’s iconoclastic gesture, Automobile Tire Print as his starting point. But in the place of the older artist’s single tire track, Young produces an opus of traces of the complex and intricate choreography performed by a team of riders. And thus an unexpected, updated, and expanded interpretation of Jackson Pollock’s seminal “action paintings”.

His work has been exhibited internationally in many exhibitions including P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, the Whitney Biennial, New York, the Serpentine Gallery, London and the 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, among many others.

The artist lives and works in New York City.