Vol. 71, no. 16
APEX at Portland Art Museum offers abstractions, optimistic message
In the second installment of APEX, a series celebrating the city’s most notable contemporary art, the Portland Art Museum presents the work of PDX-based artist Chris Johanson.
The exhibit has Johanson bouncing back and forth from do-it-yourself, childlike paintings to psychedelic abstracted whirls of color. Drawings are ripped from spiral sketchbooks with raw edges preserved. Paintings are presented one in front of the other on rickety frames made of scrap wood. A crude room with an undersized entrance houses a light installation and rotating circular work that moves when you do. The exhibit definitely stands out from the rest of the floor’s art.
Johanson is considered one of the first San Francisco skateboard and graffiti artists to help define the Mission School, a community whose work responds to suburban life. These artists were known for using simple supplies and found objects, and Johanson’s early work consisted of observations with cartoon-y figures drawn in black marker on public restroom walls. Johanson’s recent work embraces this graffiti aesthetic, now with more formal presentation.
Johanson’s work—down to the very arrangement of his installation—is compelling for its seeming simplicity. His figures are the rudimentary stuff of kindergarten drawings, but with complex, though frank, commentary on the consumerist, pill-popping isolation that marks the modern suburban condition. The artist strives for purity and honesty. One of his figures wonders why presidents don’t serve in war. “Were you scared to die there?” the little gray man asks, his concerns too big for his thought bubble.
Ironically, this attempt at unpretentiousness can have the opposite effect. Another painting of a landscape is titled subtly “Earth people stop being assholes.” The painting is part of the series presented one in front of the other on the wooden frame, with the landscape in front, three paintings of a woman driving behind it, and lastly a thick whirl of color entitled “Non-Time Specific Molecular Contemporary Landscape.” We spend too much time driving, we get it. With a message so obvious from the titles alone, there seems little point in illustrating it.
However, this weakness is not representative of the general spirit of Johanson’s work. It is generally endearing and invites an innocent kind of contemplation. The rotating dial in the irregular womb-like room is decorated with groupings of faceless little figures in various positions of prayer. The piece rotates with the movements of viewers, turning the little figures upside-down and back again. The circle of lights on the opposite wall blinks randomly, but with ticks like a clock. Both pieces cycle, implying birth and death. This room is void of words and critique. It is a celebration of the march of life unencumbered by modern trappings.
Johanson offers an ultimately optimistic message, first uniting us in our loneliness, and then reminding us that we are not alone: despite our unimportant everyday distractions, we are still a part of something bigger.