general — H Spencer Young

H Spencer Young (b. Cleveland, Ohio) is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist, writer, director and producer with a self-driven, research-based studio practice. Concerned with a wide array of formal and post-conceptual challenges, Spencer’s practice is oriented around subverting and interrogating conceptual and historical norms of image and object making with a focus on how we see.

Spencer has a Bachelors degree in Visual Media with a minor in Cinema Studies from The American University in Washington, D.C..

Autumn, 2023 Spencer’s essay on Marcel Duchamp’s 1963 retrospective at the Norton Simon Museum was published by Pasadena Magazine. Editor: Malina Saval.

Winter 2022, Spencer exhibited with Beverly’s at Untitled Art, Art Basel | Miami Beach, curated by Leah Dixon.

Summer, 2022, Spencer’s work was seen on the front page of the New York Times Arts section review of “The Patriot,” a group show at O’Flaherty’s, curated by Jamian Juliano-Villani and Billy Grant.

Winter, 2021 Spencer exhibited at Art Basel | Miami Beach in the Gallery Sector of Satellite Art Fair, curated by Brian Andrew Whiteley.

Winter/Spring 2020 Spencer’s work “Memories of the Future, 2020” was exhibited as part of Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit’s (MOCAD) Rapid Response group show, curated by Wayne Northcross.

In 2018, Spencer directed the official music video for Joan as Police Woman’s “Warning Bell,” from her recent album, Damned Devotion, which was featured in The Atlantic. Spencer also edited and sound designed Rashid Johnson’s “Samuel in Space,” for Ballroom Marfa.

Summer, 2019 and Spring 2021, Spencer’s works Inversion #14, 2017 and Foundations, 2014 were auctioned on Paddle8.com and Capsule Auctions, respectively, to benefit the Center for Art Law in New York, curated by Louise Carron.

In 2019, an image of Spencer’s was selected for Simultaneous Soloists, a publication on the work of Anthony McCall from Pioneer Press, New York.

Winter 2022, for the 6th year in a row, Spencer’s work was available in a small edition to benefit Carriage Trade, New York, curated by Peter Scott.

Spencer’s work was recently included in Small Works at Abattoir Gallery in Cleveland, curated by Lisa Kurzner and Rose Burlingham, as well as in their group show, Landscape, Cityscape, from December, 2022 through February, 2023.

Artists Spencer has shown with include Azikiwe Mohammed, Spencer Tunick, Spencer Sweeney, Lumin Wakoa, Alexandra Hammond, Lauren Yeager, Sonia Louise Davis, Kevin Kearns, Hildur Jonsson, Dave Schubert, Bert Stern, Jack Henry, Trudy Benson, Sean Lennon, Dan Loxton, Dana Oldfather, Carlos Rosales-Silva, Fred Gutzeit, Ricky Powell, Jennifer McDermott, Carmen Winant, EJ McAdams, Tracy Emin, Dash Snow, Tom Smith, Julia Colavita, Jeff Preiss, Gianna Commito, Gwenn Thomas, Jonathan Rosen, Jeffrey Tranchell, Erykah Townsend, R.H. Quaytman, Scott Reeder and many more.

Spencer’s visionary experimental film for fashion house Honor, featuring Xiao Wen Ju, Josephine Skriver, and Anne-Sophie Monrad, was premiered by W Magazine, with a soundtrack by Here We Go Magic.

In 2013, Spencer co-concepted the foundational branding for Juice Press, with founder Marcus Antebi, starting with their first and only location, going on to create their every film and photograph, for all stores and social, billboard ads, in-store films, postcards, phone booth ads, etc. which became the voice and visual language of the brand, from 1 store locally to 80 nationally. The flagship location on Greenwich avenue, nearly the size of an entire city block, still features Spencer’s large scale photographs across the entire block of windows, 10 years later.

In January, 2016, Spencer was selected to exhibit and speak on his work at the New York Public Library's "Librarian's Choice," curated by Fred Gutzeit.

September - October of 2016, Spencer exhibited in "Sensing Place" at Chris Davison Gallery, Newburgh, New York, curated by Chris Davison and Kevin Kearns.

Spencer’s artwork has raised thousands of dollars to benefit emerging artist grants, not-for-profit galleries, and organizations providing resources to the art world as a whole.

Additional highlights:

Spencer was sponsored by Czech author and screenwriter Arnost Lustig to attend the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (Filmová a televizní fakulta Akademie múzických umění v Praze/FAMU).

During undergraduate studies, Spencer was one of 13 students from across the United States selected by presidential historian and author Dr. Douglas Brinkley for The Majic Bus, a twice-run collegiate experiential learning program. The Majic Bus traveled 44 states, during which the students studied Geography of the American Civil Rights Struggle, American Intellectual History, American Road Literature, and American Social history, where it precisely happened.

Spencer has written and directed numerous commissioned films, commercials, political documentaries and music videos, which have been featured in W Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Brooklyn Vegan, Fact Magazine, New York Times, Zoe Report, Bloomberg, and film festivals nationwide.

In 2005 Spencer was a story consultant and editor on “Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis,” the notorious documentary on Jack Smith, directed by Mary Jordan, produced by Richard Prince and Kenneth Wayne Peralta, voted one of the 10 best movies of 2006 by Entertainment Weekly Magazine.

Spencer directed, produced and wrote the feature documentary "Swing State" with Jason Zone Fisher and John Intrater which provided an inside look at the 2006 Ohio Governor’s race. The film captured the Democrats’ sweep of Ohio which set up President Barack Obama’s White House victory in 2008. The story is told across Ohio through the eyes of a family, which gave a unique look at the political life. “Swing State” set the current one-day attendance record at the Cleveland International Film Festival and premiered in 2 adjacent sold-out theaters on opening night to standing ovations.

Finally, Spencer’s artwork has been direct inspiration for couture fashion, seen in multiple seasons on the runways of New York Fashion Week, particularly as the inspiration for most of fashion house Honor’s output in 2013, though without credit. This in addition to the Emmys red carpet, at which the most talked about dress in 2013, worn by Zosia Mamet, was comprised of Spencer’s work, The New Sky, 2012 though without credit.

If you’re still reading and wondering . . . “wtf is a Majic Bus?!?” The Majic Bus (this will be back online at a future date) traveled to 44 U.S. states with the aim of learning American history where it precisely occured. Time was spent studying with, and getting to know, usually at their homes, icons such as Kurt Vonnegut, Melba Pattillo Beals, Hunter S. Thompson, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Bo Diddley, Townes Van Zandt, Toni Morrison, Arthur Miller, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Rita Dove, The Sampas/Kerouac family, Arthur Schlessinger Jr., Ramblin' Jack Elliot, William Kunstler, Alice Brock, Ed Asner, William vanden Heuvel, Hubert Selby, Jr., Robert Hunter, Steven Soderbergh, Kerry Kennedy, Allen Ginsberg, Jim Carroll, Steven Ambrose, Jimmy and Roslyn Carter, Chris Felver, T. Boone Pickens, William Kennedy, Chuck Berry, Waylon Jennings, Liz Gilbert, Hamilton Jordan, Larry Woiwode, John Kenneth Galbraith, Kinky Friedman, Tom McGuane and many others. Standout memories: restoring Bill Clinton’s boyhood home in Hope, AR, walking Lowell, MA (one on one) with Allen Ginsberg, hanging out with Hunter S. Thompson in his kitchen discussing “Hell’s Angels,” reading and having discussions with Toni Morrison, having time with Townes Van Zandt at the Maple Leaf in New Orleans, privately touring Little Rock Central High with Melba Patillo Beals. It was, obviously, bananas.

H SPENCER YOUNG STUDIO

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