Why Eirik Johnson? There’s nothing wrong with Johnson’s work, but why him for a solo exhibit at the Henry Gallery? The Henry heaps few such honors on Northwest heads, which makes him an unlikely candidate. He’s a photojournalist with a solid idea. For years he has traveled through what’s left of the logging towns along the Coast, documenting life in the shadow of a once-flourishing industry.
I’d seen his work at G. Gibson Gallery and thought, nice enough, but it doesn’t inhabit its own experience. What Jasper Johns said about sculpture – Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it. – also applies to photographs. There’s something loose and unresolved about Johnson’s imagery. His are impressions too faint to score on their own. Had the Henry wanted to explore the myth of the West rattling around in the wrecked present day, it would have been far better off with Glenn Rudolph. Each of Rudolph’s images is a world.
The exhibit turned out to be better than I imagined. Turns out, loose and unresolved can be virtues in the right context, like mist on a moor.
Chief Henry curator Elizabeth Brown gave Johnson the chance to rise to the occasion of his formidable backstory. In smaller galleries leading to his are 19th and early 20th century logging photos by Darius Kinsey and Carleton Watkins. They capture the grotesque sublime of a booming industry chomping its way through forests as if other old growths would rise magically in their wake to be logged in turn.
Magic is gone by the time Johnson shows up. He documents the makeshift instead of the magnificent.
He’s one of those artists whose work resonates in its own company. He offers not soloists but a chorus.
Johnson images via G. Gibson Gallery and Rena Bransten Gallery.
I was sold on this show until stopped by Morris Graves, whose Abandoned Homestead hangs in an adjancent gallery.
Graves, U.S. (1910 – 2001) 1934 – 1937, Oil on canvas 37 3/8 x 43 9/16 inches. Morris Graves Foundation — Robert and Desireé Yarber
It knocked Johnson clear out of my mind, and I’d just seen him. Through Jan. 31.
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