Aaron Young’s Greeting Card 10a takes its title from a 1944 Jackson Pollock piece, expanding the connotations of action painting. In Young’s Greeting Card 10a the spontaneous scribbles
and gestures associated with Pollock’s subconscious negotiation of the canvas are re-created by something much more powerful: 12 high octane motorcycles. The making of this piece was staged as a performance: plywood panels were laid out to cover a 72 x 128 foot area of the floor, then stained and painted with layers of yellow, pink, orange, and red, covered with a final coat of jet black before a team of bikers rallied on its surface for 7 minutes. Created in the dark with only the bike headlights illuminating the action, the ear-blasting revving of the engines and toxic clouds of exhaust smoke gave the effect of a rock-concert extravaganza, placing abstractpainting in the realm of hard-core spectacle or extreme sport. The painting seen in the gallery is comprised of 6 panels taken from this event; its making can be viewed on the Saatchi Gallery website Click here