BRATTLEBORO — The Brattleboro Museum & Art Center (BMAC) presents an online conversation with artist Erick Johnson and BMAC Chief Curator Mara Williams about “Double Take,” an installation of Johnson's oil paintings and photographs.
This free online talk takes place on Thursday, Sept. 23, at 7:30 p.m. Register at brattleboromuseum.org.
“Following Johnson on Instagram, I noticed he tended to post pictures of patterns made by seemingly random objects seen on the streets of New York: construction scaffolding, double grids created by grates and their shadows, walls tiled with multiple copies of the same poster,” said Williams in a news release. “I challenged him to create an immersive installation incorporating his Instagram feed and paintings.”
Johnson considers painting with oil to be his primary focus.
“I like to push the dynamics of the work away from established patterns of geometric painting,” he said. “My work is hard-edged, but the edges bleed and stain; the polygons appear rational but are irregular and unique; the colors read clearly but on closer inspection are impure mixtures of different pigments.”
The artist describes his photography practice, on the other hand, as “quick, unplanned, and serendipitous.”
“Shooting on an iPhone, I'm drawn to situations where contingent forces come together,” Johnson said. “Unlikely nameless agents spray paint, build, tear down, pile up. Natural forces and humanity impart a 'wabi-sabi' effect that is literally 'here today, gone tomorrow' in a city that is ever-changing.”
Johnson's work has been exhibited in solo shows in New York and Washington, D.C., and group exhibitions in New York, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Laholm, Sweden, among other places. He holds an M.F.A. from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College.
“Erick Johnson: Double Take” is on view at BMAC through Monday, Oct. 11.