PERSON, PLACE, or THING - Dustin Yellin

    DUSTIN YELLIN:
          "PERSON, PLACE, or THING"
  a (follow up) NOUNS DAO PROPOSAL

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THE ARTIST

Dustin Yellin tells stories that weave together the diverse forces of nature and technology. Through his diverse body of work, which includes sculpture, painting, animation, and institution building, Yellin draws attention to the interconnectivity of all beings and things. His approach tunnels across traditionally siloed fields so as to crystallize the idea that both the human world, and all other worlds around us, are a collection of enmeshed networks - even if many are hidden.

Yellin is also the founder and president of Pioneer Works, an admission-free cultural center in Brooklyn, New York dedicated to experimentation, education, and production across the disciplines of art, science, music, and technology. The artist balances descriptive poetry with a prescriptive social practice so as to span new ways of seeing and being, and build a bridge to a more holistic world.

Yellin’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions throughout his over 20-year career at numerous galleries and museums including Venus Over Manhattan, New York; Vito Schnabel Gallery, Milan; Haines Gallery, San Francisco; Half Gallery, New York; Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam; the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum, and more. Yellin’s work has also been exhibited in group shows at international institutions including the Museum of Art and Design, New York; Leeum Museum of Art, Seoul; Matadero Centre for Contemporary Creation, Madrid; Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Paris; Fondazione Berengo, Venice; and Museo Del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, among others.

THE INSPIRATION

DAOs offer the greatest innovation in governance the world has ever seen. As both an homage to, and a cast that breaks the mold from which all Western political theory springs, Dustin Yellin’s new sculpture - PERSON, PLACE, or THING - revisits and updates the original collage-like image depicting the social contract: Abraham Bosse’s frontispiece for Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651).

In preparation for the publication of Leviathan, the book’s author, Hobbes, sat with noted artist, Bosse, to create a visual image which not only summed up the thesis of the book - that the state derives its power from the collection of bodies that constitute it - but to give this idea a powerful avatar.

Bosse presented a giant sovereign arising from the mountains above a city. Upon zooming in, this ruler’s body is made up of hundreds of smaller figures representing the citizenry who, together, form a kind of fish scale-like suit of armor protecting and making up the figure of authority. Over this personage, who represents the collective order, is a banner that states: There is no power on earth to be compared to him; in the book itself, Hobbes penned the often-quoted phrase that knowledge is power, or more specifically: the organization and use of knowledge is the base from which power stems.

Abraham Bosse’s frontispiece for Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651)

THE ORIGINAL PROPOSAL

Like Hobbes, the Nouns DAO is predicated on forming and testing new ways of gathering.

To that end, in April 2022 the Nouns DAO voted on and executed Proposal 48 - Nouns Psychogeography Sculpture with Dustin Yellin, wherein the artist was commissioned to update the Leviathan image by creating PERSON, PLACE, or THING, a new sculptural portrait layering each Nouns avatar into one fantastic body. For the commission, Yellin hand painted the 402 Nouns minted in Year One, integrating them into a unique glass artwork to forge a record of the history of the Nouns DAO, while branding its newest emblem.

Much like a yearbook, a ship’s manifest, or the signatures under a document, this snapshot provides a freeze frame of the DAO’s founders and builders. This in-all-is-one super-avatar represents the shared vision and trust between all stakeholders, while providing a rallying banner - an art object - that crystalizes how individuals are more powerful when they come together, and how a community can achieve the seemingly impossible by focusing its collective resources and talents around a common task.

THE (follow up) PROPOSAL

Upon acceptance of Proposal 48, the Nouns DAO compensated the artist with an initial deposit of 50ETH and made a donation of 100,000 USDC to Pioneer Works.

A second payment of 50ETH and 1 Noun NFT (Noun 252 from the Nouns treasury) was agreed to be paid upon completion of the PERSON, PLACE, or THING sculpture and its accompanying NFT.

Upon acceptance of this proposal, the NFT for PERSON, PLACE, or THING will be transferred from DustinYellinDeployer to a Nouns DAO wallet.