STATEMENT OF WORK

STATEMENT OF RECENT WORK  /  https://www.aprilzannejohnson.com

I am interested in context, reinvention, materials, experimentation.  The work I make, often resembling a fertile inner realm of disorienting environments may include sound forms, cyphers, architectural, landscape, and body references.  The sculptures and installation are a realization of my painted or drawn images, separate, yet symbiotic.

 The Sugar Cube Paintings , Iridescent Utopia Installation

Sugar Cube Painting I,II,III,IV , Iridescent Utopia Installation, each 110 x 110 x 2 in., oil on canvas, decoupage,phosphorescence of europium compounds, April "Zanne" Suzanne Johnson

Statement

A beacon in which memory is collected, and exists, in each passing moment. The context in light of which one views their surroundings. The light in which we gaze from and upon. Radical vulnerability that allows us to experience the world without expectation.  A bridge of clarity between the unconscious and the conscious realm.  These paintings explore the idea of a muse as memory.  When one begins to paint, the muse becomes a source of excitement or obsession. Of desire and beauty. The idea of the muse becomes more important than the actual muse. The muse becomes multiples and memories. The muse exists in the utopian realm. The muses are long gone. Changed. We look for idolatry in modern worship.  We search for an idea to put a face on God. We worship the sequins in the actors’ dress or the night sky. We stare at the diamonds in the crown. A distraction from the drudgery of daily life.  A sweetness evolved and developed through selection, an idealist beauty basking in the light of glittering new love. The drunken lovers leaving the gathering to engage in the forbidden fruit. The dust on butterflies’ wings. The glow of the fireflies in the field.  Erotic in the way nature reproduces, seducing with attractive color. Bioluminescence in the visual vocabularies of plants and animals. Pathways opened through listening to nature. Not condemning or denying that we are part the vast universe that is God.  A physical act of becoming conduit as an act of communication with an expansive universe.  These paintings represent invisible doorways that simply need calm to be seen clearly

 Each painting is 110 x110 x 2 inches. The oil paintings are mixed with traditional oil pigments, decoupage, and the phosphorescence of europium compounds.  The paintings can be viewed on the wall in a linear formation or around a cube as an installation.  I do not intend to contain the work to one format. 

The paintings are a segue between my Ten Houses Drawings of 2021. 

© 2021 April S Johnson / Artists Rights Society

Ten Houses and Information Systems Installation

During  2020-2022 I created a large installation of work that includes nine large scale graphite drawings on paper (Ten Houses, 2020-2021), fourteen sculptures made from a lifetime of collected objects, obsolete technology, wood, and fabric (Information Systems, 2020)  and a single, panoramic oil on canvas painting (Quadriptych -Pythia's Sphere of Vision). The formation of the work is based on a small sculpture made during 2012 and a several small sketch books  from 1990-2010.

The two-year project is about communication, vulnerability, loss, hope, myth, memory and finally metamorphosis.  The drawings are filled with body reference, landscape and architectural references. They are intended to feel like very large pages from a small sketchbook.  Sentences and words are written over and over until obliterated.  All the drawings and paintings have a frenetic feeling.  The sculptures have hard and soft shells, beech bough spines and armatures and contain obsolete information in the form of poems torn from notebooks, love letters received, emails printed, and a myriad of disassembled cell phone and computer components. Photographs, pages from outdated academic texts, undergarments, jewelry, dried flowers and drawings.  The sculptures are filled with a lifetime of mementos and bound.  I call the entire body of work We are Here Now.

The drawings range from 98- 113 in. in height and are all consistently 107 in. wide. All the drawings are graphite on white paper and have irregular edges.  The sculptures range in height from 16 ft. to 6 in.  and are 5 ft. at the greatest width. They are predominately neutral beige tones with bits of color and iridescence.  Many are hanging, some lean on the wall and some on a flat surface.  The painting is 72 in. tall by 196 in. wide and is oil paint on canvas. The canvas is stretched on heavy traditional stretcher bars and coated with home made gesso. Small sections of the large painting have a fractured texture, some has slick modern shine to it. The image is oil paint and is meant to fuse the past and future.

Visual Presentation

The order in which the work is meant to be viewed is the order in which the work was created. The first grouping is Information Systems. Walk through the work, as the hanging sculptures obscure the path, and enter into the drawings ( in a circle, or left to right)  that lead , ultimately to the single canvas painting at the end of the space.

The two-year project portrays communication, vulnerability, loss, hope, myth, memory, and metamorphosis.  The drawings (Ten Houses, 2021-2022) are filled with body, landscape, and architectural references. Sentences and words are written repeatedly until obliterated in a ritualistic format. These large drawings are intended to communicate urgency and are reminiscent of pages from a small, rough sketchbook, yet amplified to demand visual space. 

Details: Information Systems, 2020

The sculptures (Information Systems, 2020) were made during the global pandemic of 2020 and range in size from 86 ft. to 6 in. in height, many hanging from the ceiling, several smaller sculptures lean on the wall or pedestal. The sculptures have both hard and soft shells. They are made with petrified nylon and silk, weeping beech bough spine armatures and contain obsolete information in the form of poems torn from notebooks, love letters received, emails printed, and a myriad of disassembled cell phone and computer components. Photographs, pages from outdated academic texts, undergarments, jewelry, dried flowers, and drawings.  The sculptures are filled with a lifetime of mementos and bound with sinew. They are reminiscent of insect cocoons and have an iridescence, especially to those that hang from the ceiling and slowly rotate as the air in the room moves naturally from people moving through the space.  All contents have been documented on a separate list.

Size Information Systems

8 hanging sculptures ranging from 86 in.  down to 6 in., several sculptures lean against the wall , ranging from 48 in. to 21 in. in height, and some  that lay flat on the floor or table, the with the largest at  36 in.  

https://www.aprilzannejohnson.com

https://foundwork.art/artists/aprilzannejohnson1

Details:  Ten Houses

Ten Houses is a series of drawings created during 2021-2022.   Ten Houses incorporates landscape, architectural and body references. This work describes a dream state and has notations of obliterated cyphers, sound patterns, psychedelia, landscape, and body reference throughout.

The large drawings are consistently 107 in. wide with heights ranging from 97 to 113 in. in height with rough and irregular edges intended to feel as torn pages from a small sketchbook. This is a way to state a very intimate form of communication is a grand scale. Drawing is a visual language and a primary form of communication when no other form seems to suit.  Memory plays a dynamic role in this massive project. The place we store memory, one for real occurrence in memory and another for reoccurring dreams in memory.  I want to explore how we separate the two in our mind and why we revisit places we create.  A lifetime of notations and sketches from reoccurring dreams in which the memory visits dwellings that never seen in life, yet the structure details, occupants and occurrences are extremely vibrant and colorful.  Graphite is the choice medium for this portion of my work as it feels to be the most immediate, mist urgent form of communication and fluidity for me. The stark contrast of black and white is a reminder that most people dream only in black and white, if they dream at all.  This drawing is not mounted or framed. The edges are irregular to reflect the spontaneous nature of the work and subject. Each drawing in this series of work has notes, writing and poetry that accompany the work. I have archived months of video and recorded spoken word that accompany the drawings, sculptures, and painting.

See link for size details:

https://www.aprilzannejohnson.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=16627&Akey=B3SVBF6S&ajx=1#!pf195032

 Details: Quadriptych (Pythia’s Sphere of Vision) is a 72 x 192 in. oil painting on canvas

The painting Quadriptych (Pythia’s Sphere of Vision) is a 72 x 192 in. oil painting on canvas that compiles a frenetic combination of green marks and alchemic materials to combine the past and the future. The handmade gesso gives way to cracking in some portions of the work that refence antiquity while other areas remain slick and modern in texture.  The biomorphic, body and architectural forms are references to a memory of being a female youth in the 1980’s misogynistic gaze.  The painting is composed of screenshot imagery of 1980’s rock gods undulating gestures, innocent, youthful fawn haired bathers, the hexagon shape, amniotic sacks with contents, vertical stripes of containment, glowing swamps and trees who witness history.   I reference mycelium fungi taking over the idols of the past to devour them and form something entirely new.

See link for size details:

https://www.aprilzannejohnson.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=16627&Akey=B3SVBF6S&ajx=1#!pf199766

©2012 -2023 April “Zanne” Suzanne Johnson/ Artist Right’s Society NYC

W.A.G.E.N.T #325