Artist Registry


The White Columns Curated Artist Registry is an online platform for emerging and under-recognized artists to share images and information about their respective practices. The Registry seeks to create a context for artists who have yet to benefit from wider critical, curatorial or commercial support. To be eligible, artists cannot be affiliated with a commercial gallery in New York City.




To apply to the Registry, click here. Join our mailing list here to receive our open call announcement and other programming updates. For any further questions about the Registry, please contact us at registry@whitecolumns.org.

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Kenneth George Johnson
Minneapolis MN US
Updated: 2024-08-01 22:37:07

STATEMENT OF WORK

I have an interest in the surfaces of things, both natural and artificial, and in their construction: what we can see both with the naked eye and also assisted with various enhanced views through images produced by cameras or scanners, or images available on the internet. Examples of this would include fabric weaving patterns, the delicate veins of leaves, the repeated intersections of a wicker chair seat, the isobars of a weather map, the tiling found in certain cultures, and the myriad number of knots and tangles available to us daily. 

 

 

I develop working sketches of the patterns that intrigue me, simple one-offs which limn the idea of the surface. In our minds we may sense some sort of logical, symmetrical perfection of pattern. However, what actually exists is limited by its being a part of our sooty, lumpy world. I then use the sketch as a road map for the final painting. The resulting painting is a reproduction of a sketch of an image, imperfect in its logic, skewed in its harmony, and obviously hand constructed, line by line, its shape a self-countenance of the just so, likely as not.