Meditations Meditations is a series of pictures about experiencing and celebrating the visual language of photography. The work is focused on abstraction and uses a more traditional structure of still life. The pictures are a process of constructing compositions and studying the variations of form and structure. Experimenting with dynamic color and the shading of light, the images play out on traditional geometric shapes and an eccentric collection of objects. The space is a dynamic field for observing the magic and illusion of photographic possibility. The work is inspired and influenced by other artistic practices such as painting and sculpture, design and architecture, fashion and commercial photography. The creativity and inspiration when looking at other artistic mediums has always been an important foundation for thinking about photography and creating an open system of ideas and aesthetics. Other influences come from the history of avant-garde art such as Futurism and Surrealism, Modernism and Minimalism, Pop art and Conceptual art. The philosophy of Meditations is also a concept of going deeper into the mind. Artistic practice is a form of meditation and spiritual ritual, that gives structure and form to the imagination. This process of experiencing a deeper connection to creativity, is the challenging path of expanding ideas into a visual form. And that material object or form (painting, sculpture, photography) is the reality/subjectivity of a highly focused and enlightened artistic experience. Art offers an important opportunity to connect and participate in culture and history/future. Junkyard Dog Junkyard Dog is a collection of photographs and concepts spanning 20 years of artistic projects. Johnson's photographic work during this period focused on abstract metaphors, social critique, dark humor and personal narrative. These projects were structured around poetic abstractions and haunted allegorical storytelling. The images use mysterious symbolism and experimented with radical juxtaposition to create tension and redefinition of objects and contextual metaphor. The logic and meaning of the photograph is subjective and dynamic and exists in a ghostly dream world of esoteric mysticism. Johnson attempts the recoding of objects and weaving textures of visual language into a methodic grammar of structuralism or critique of social systems and experiences around the dysfunction of power and the corruption of knowledge. Artistic process and the spiritual ritual of creativity and the fortress of experience deeply inform Johnson’s intuitive and experimental narrative. The historical avant-garde of exploring the impossible or radical risk taking are philosophical structures that are of interest and influence. The modernist discipline and commitment of tradition and craft and working in a historical context balance the cold conceptual influence of contemporary photographic theory and aesthetics. The beauty of elegant failure or discovery and the necessity of critique or dialogue and questions of artistic value or experience are the spiritual practice of artistic journey. |