“The Consequential Nature of the Simultaneous,” 2025, glass, epoxy, collage, acrylic paint (Photo: Martyna Szczesna)
There’s something ancient about Dustin Yellin’s sculptural work. Crafted from laminated glass embedded with layered imagery and paint, the artist’s signature sculptures conjure scenes frozen in time, an archive that’s as pristine as it is precarious. These “three-dimensional collages,” as Yellin calls them, foreground If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?, his first solo exhibition at Almine Rech Gallery in New York.
Held at the gallery’s Tribeca location, the exhibition journeys through the forces of space, time, nature, and technology all at once. At its core are five new glass-layered sculptures, each of which exude a quiet sense of gravity through their futuristic narratives. The Consequential Nature of the Simultaneous, for instance, reveals two parallel stories, juxtaposing technological advancement and historical memory. On one side, alien astronauts swarm around a NASA spacecraft and a particle accelerator, dangling their legs off the metallic edge as birds circle in the air above them. On the other side is an ancient Etruscan ceremony, unfolding against an earthy backdrop of towering trees and blooming flowers. Between these two poles is a stiff rope, pulled on either end, miming a game of eternal tug-of-war.
Keeping with the tone of Yellin’s practice, it’s clear that The Consequential Nature of the Simultaneous is speculative, staging dramatic encounters and a level of continuity between two contrasting and at times unexpected impulses. Pliny the Younger is similar in its subject matter, yet again tracing conflicting narratives across its composition. Here, a volcano erupts on the sculpture’s left side, its lava seeping down into the lush grass and trees covering the hill below. On the right side is a massive cliff face with a civilization that seems at once classical and futuristic, combining Greco-Roman columns with red, industrial beams. As with The Consequential Nature of the Simultaneous, both of the sculpture’s environments are subtly connected, this time with the beams, which also run beneath the earth. Taken in its entirety, Pliny the Younger is just as much a “time-bridge” as Yellin’s other work, per Frieze senior editor Terence Trouillot.
“That tension—between instinct and intention, entropy and preservation—runs throughout Yellin’s practice,” Trouillot writes in an essay accompanying the exhibition. “His layered glass works offer a momentary stay against forgetting, embody[ing] the artist’s ongoing effort to refract presence through deep, collective time.”
The question posed in the exhibition’s title—If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?—is also revealing of Yellin’s thematic preferences.
“A nest is made by instinct, a house by design,” Trouillot explains. “The nest may be natural, but the house is a container of chosen material.”
The house, as a structure that “determines what is remembered, what is kept, and what is made visible,” is an apt metaphor for Yellin’s sculptures. They are equally capable of survival and storage, keeping memory intact like an archive that always looks to the future.
If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house? is currently open at Almine Rech Gallery through August 1, 2025.
Dustin Yellin’s new solo exhibition, If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?, showcases the artist’s preoccupation with memory, archives, collectivity, and the future.
Installation view of “Dustin Yellin: If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?” at Almine Rech Gallery in New York, NY.
“Seed 7,” 2025, glass, epoxy, acrylic paint, ink (Photo: Martyna Szczesna)
Installation view of “Dustin Yellin: If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?” at Almine Rech Gallery in New York, NY.
“The Habit of Nature (Study 2),” 2025, glass, epoxy, collage, acrylic paint (Photo: Martyna Szczesna)
The exhibition is open through August 1, 2025, at Almine Rech Gallery in New York.
“Pliny the Younger,” 2025, glass, epoxy, acrylic, collage (Photo: Martyna Szczesna)
Installation view of “Dustin Yellin: If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?” at Almine Rech Gallery in New York, NY.
Installation view of “Dustin Yellin: If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?” at Almine Rech Gallery in New York, NY.
Exhibition Information:
Dustin Yellin
If a bird’s nest is nature, what is a house?
June 26–Aug. 1, 2025
Almine Rech Gallery
361 Broadway, New York, NY 10013
Dustin Yellin: Website | Instagram
Almine Rech Gallery: Website | Instagram
My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by Almine Rech Gallery.
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