Sean M. Johnson does not, himself, defy gravity. He arranges for objects to do it for him – sofas taped to walls, chairs teetering on two legs, ladders frozen on a perilous diagonal, cups poised on the edge of their saucers. Beyond the balance he manages to strike for them, nothing holds them in place beyond the seemingly insufficient trappings of tape and pins.
London bridges are always falling down, but Johnson gives them a last
chance to impersonate the functional. The risks he takes are associated
with dance and so are his payoffs, those complete moments on the edge of
a fall. There are other artists who reassemble furniture to frame it in
a new context, including Roy McMakin and Drew Daly.
Compared to their work, Johnson’s is rough and tumble, Caliban to their
Ariel. The silence his work inspires has an undercurrent of domestic turmoil: a heavy remembrance leavened with wit and ungainly grace.
In his mid-twenties, Johnson is mixed race: white mother and black father.
His parents recently lost their home to foreclosure.
He remembers elementary school, feeling pinned in place.
Inside his childhood was a loose and lovely obsessive. Hence his self-portrait (at age 9) in 1,649 hot wheels, each loose on the floor and capable of wheeling away. Some he painted, largely brown, as there aren’t a sufficient store of brown hot wheels on the market.
Detail:
At Howard House through May 1. Johnson discusses his work at the gallery on Saturday at noon.
Leave a Reply