Chris Johanson

Chris Johanson             
I Can Feel It (Co-Exist In Modern Death):  Alright Yeah!
May 13 – June 30                                                                                                                                 
Gallery hours: Wednesday - Saturday 12 – 6 PM
Opening reception: May 13th, 6 – 9 PM

Jack Hanley Gallery, Los Angeles is pleased to present I Can Feel It (Co-Exist in Modern Death): Alright Yeah! an exhibition by Portland-based artist, Chris Johanson.  Inspired by American political subcultures, Johanson’s paintings, drawings, and sculptural installations engage the provocative, narrative, and conceptual framework of art making.  This exhibition is part of a larger project that Johanson has been working on for several years.  Taking form as an ongoing examination that relates to, in the artist’s words, a “universal life force with specific examples from earth”, it serves as a daily meditation on notions of inner peace, individual desires, and release from the “psychological negative war.” And finally, the works operate visually as a way of coming to terms with what he calls “the abstract, figurative and geometric contemporary issues of life.”
 
For this exhibition, Johanson will present a site-specific Modern Death Art installation consisting of sculpture, paintings, and light as a medium, or “light art”.  The center of the gallery will feature a brightly colored, kinetic, amorphous blob surrounded by crudely-made on-lookers(made in collaboration with the artist Kal Spelletich). The exhibition will also feature paintings on recycled wood, as well as works on paper, with some in collaboration with the artist, Jo Jackson. For Johanson, “The abstract paintings serve as an outside stimulus, and supporting roles for the internal point stimulus with the idea of understanding abstraction in order to better understand realism in life.”  

Interactive sounds will be created in collaboration with musician, Tom Greenwood from Jackie-O Motherfucker.