Apartment on Cardboard

2000 - Painting (Painting)

Chris Johanson

location: Los Angeles, California
year born: 1968
gender: male
nationality: American
home town: San Jose, California

Apartment on Cardboard (2000) is an exterior view of an abstracted apartment building. Viewers unwittingly become voyeurs, peering through the rectangles that stand for windows and observing the residents therein, who ponder questions both mundane and existential: “Where is Ron now?” and “What have I become?” The queries and characters are treated democratically—not judged, praised, or subjected to hierarchy. While their thoughts are specific, the painting captures a universal urban activity: looking across to the building next door and wondering about its residents, all the while knowing that they have probably looked over and wondered about us, as well.


The prolific Chris Johanson produces paintings, zines, installations, and sculptures that are notable for their earnest, almost childlike abstraction. His work delves unabashedly into the emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of human nature, tracking points of commonality and difference using simple shapes and lines as well as an unflagging sense of magnanimous humor.


Colors:



Untitled
© » KADIST

Barry McGee

Barry McGee’s Untitled is a collection of roughly fifty, framed photographs, paintings, and text pieces clustered together in corner...

Untitled (Bird and Eyes)
© » KADIST

Clare Rojas

2008

Rojas’s two pieces in the Kadist Collection— Untitled (four-legged…) and Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) —are representative of her pictorial style which uses bold colorful blocks of paint and female and animal characters...

Studio Construct 51
© » KADIST

Barbara Kasten

2008

Barbara Kasten’s Studio Construct 51 depicts an abstract still life: a greyscale photograph of clear translucent panes assembled into geometric forms, the hard lines of their edges converging and bisecting at various points...

Stowe
© » KADIST

James Welling

2006

Welling employs simple materials like crumpled aluminum foil, wrinkled fabric and pastry dough and directly exposes them as photograms, playing with the image in the process of revealing it...

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I am Human, Abstract Foil, No Humans IV
© » KADIST

Chris Johanson

2004

Chris Johanson’s paintings, sculptures, and installations break down everyday scenes and commonplace dramas into colorful forms; the darkest sides of humanity are invoked with humor...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Barry McGee

Barry McGee’s Untitled is a collection of roughly fifty, framed photographs, paintings, and text pieces clustered together in corner...

Untitled (Bird and Eyes)
© » KADIST

Clare Rojas

2008

Rojas’s two pieces in the Kadist Collection— Untitled (four-legged…) and Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) —are representative of her pictorial style which uses bold colorful blocks of paint and female and animal characters...

Untitled (Butterfly)
© » KADIST

Mark Grotjahn

2002

This particular drawing, like many of Grotjahn’s works, presents a decentered single-point perspective...

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In the studio: Peter Barber RA
© » ROYAL ACADEMY

In the studio: Peter Barber RA | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts Peter Barber RA © Morley von Sternberg FRIBA In the studio: Peter Barber RA Read more Become a Friend In the studio: Peter Barber RA By Sarah Handelman Published 27 July 2023 The architect renowned for his social housing projects operates from a converted 19th-century shop in King’s Cross...

Weekly Picks: Indonesia (23 – 29 July 2018)
© » ARTS EQUATOR

Weekly Picks: Indonesia (23 - 29 July 2018) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Indonesia July 23, 2018 Top Picks of Indonesia art events in Bali, Bromo, Solo and Jakarta from 23-29 July 2018 In Bali, Uma Seminyak is exhibiting Dolanan , an art show by 4 artists that highlights the world of imagination...

An-My Lê: the artist portraying the inhuman scale of war and small acts of resistance
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An-My Lê: the artist portraying the inhuman scale of war and small acts of resistance Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Artist interview interview An-My Lê: the artist portraying the inhuman scale of war and small acts of resistance Airlifted out of Vietnam as a teenager when Saigon fell, the Vietnamese American photographer makes no attempt to simplify the unbearably complex, and pits individual agency against huge geopolitical forces Dale Berning Sawa 7 December 2023 Share Installation view of Fourteen Views (2023), which represents a river journey from the Mekong to the Mississippi via Parisian water gardens, encompassing Vietnam, its colonisation by France and the military intervention by the US Photo: Jonathan Dorado, © MoMA In 2021, An-My Lê had an out-of-body experience in the Californian desert...

Zurbarán’s Veil of Veronica at the MFAH
© » PAINTERS' TABLE

Zurbarán’s Veil of Veronica at the MFAH | Painters' Table Skip to main content Zurbarán’s Veil of Veronica at the MFAH Submitted by Henry McMahon on August 17, 2019...

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Undocumented Intervention
© » KADIST

Julio Cesar Morales

2006

Julio Cesar Morales’s watercolor drawings, Undocumented Intervention , show a variety of surprising hiding places assumed by people trying to cross into the United States without documentation...

Untitled
© » KADIST

Jedediah Caesar

2009

For Untitled, Caesar encased recycled objects such as scraps of plywood, paper or cloth in resin and then cut and reassembled the pieces into abstract forms...

The End One
© » KADIST

Raymond Pettibon

2005

The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...

Other works by: » Chris Johanson  
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I am Human, Abstract Foil, No Humans IV
© » KADIST

Chris Johanson

2004

Chris Johanson’s paintings, sculptures, and installations break down everyday scenes and commonplace dramas into colorful forms; the darkest sides of humanity are invoked with humor...

Untitled (Painting of a Man Leaving in Boat)
© » KADIST

Chris Johanson

2010

Chris Johanson’s Untitled (Painting of a Man Leaving in Boat) (2010) pictures a canoe drifting toward an off-kilter horizon line, which demarcates the cobalt sea from the cerulean sky...

Eclipse
© » KADIST

Jordan Kantor

2009

Eclipse is a series of screenprints from Jordan Kantor’s larger vitrine installation that included reworkings of a single image of a small group viewing an eclipse through shielding cut-outs...

Reborn
© » KADIST

Desiree Holman

2010

Reborn, 2010 is a three-channel video by Desiree Holman that questions ideas of motherhood and the maternal instinct...

Untitled, (Basel lens flare 5950, 6198, 7497)
© » KADIST

Jordan Kantor

2009

Lens Flare and the series Untitled Basel Lens Flare (6168, 5950, 7497) were part of a solo project by the artist presented at ArtBasel in 2009...

Lens Flare
© » KADIST

Jordan Kantor

2008

Lens Flare and the series Untitled Basel Lens Flare (6168, 5950, 7497) were part of a solo project by the artist presented at ArtBasel in 2009...

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Art Collector and Credit Suisse Head José Olympio da Veiga Pereira Is the New President of São Paulo Biennial Foundation - via The Art Newspaper
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The organisation oversees the city’s international exhibition, as well as the country’s representation at the Venice Biennale and other projects...

Collector Bernard Lumpkin on How to Buy Black Contemporary Art Ethically - via artnet news
© » LARRY'S LIST

On the occasion of the release of the book Young, Gifted, and Black, the collector explains his philosophy about art and patronage....

Prague’s First Private Museum Is Haunted by the Specter of Communism - via Hyperallergic
© » LARRY'S LIST

Kunsthalle Praha is determined to walk the line between East and West, past and present....