Doug Young - Statement
You only need to identify with the effort, not the artifice itself. If you can empathize with his boundless energy, multi-faceted practice, self-deprecating humor or the material experiences Young has had, than it matters little whether or not you coherently accept his fictions as legit excuses for making art. The booshwash just serves as the Hollywood flick that begs the suspension of your disbelief. What delights is the attempt to convince us that his objects, his tall tales and even his very self belongs. What’s important is that it suggests that art is an essential practice within culture. While the humor in the work’s conception is apparent, there is something truly earnest in its realization. As he says, “the goal is not necessarily to make art, but to live life. The life of an idea-mad enthusiast who searches for the fundamentally big forces out there, and who creates a more than ordinary existence.”