Untitled (Painting of a Man Leaving in Boat)

2010 - Painting (Painting)

Chris Johanson

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

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. An orange-haired figure, oar positioned in mid-stroke, looks ahead—whether toward an edge or an infinite expanse, it is impossible to tell. Echoing a trope that recurs in Greek epic poetry, transcendental painting, and current-day reality television, the character is alone with nature. We witness—and likely empathize with—his voyage.


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
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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)
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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...

Mickey Mouse
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Paul McCarthy

2010

To make Mickey Mouse (2010), Paul McCarthy altered a found photograph—not of the iconic cartoon, but of a man costumed as Mickey...

Iron Sorrows
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Alexis Smith

1990

Iron Sorrows (1990) brings together what are for Alexis Smith common motifs and materials such as scavenged and repurposed metal, and street signage...

Untitled (Ruby Downing sitting between two Unidentified Men in a Room), Damaged series
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Lisa Oppenheim

2003

The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material...

Paper Tigers…from a whisper to a scream
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Juan Capistran

2012

The 10 $1 bills that make up From a Whisper to a Scream (2012) read like instructions in origami...

Knight #6
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Karl Haendel

2011

Haendel’s series Knights (2011) is a set of impeccably drafted, nine-foot-tall pencil drawings depicting full suits of armor...

Studio Construct 51
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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...

#17 Pink
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James Welling

2005

#17 Pink is a photogram, a photographic image produced without the use of a camera...

Arbol y Pelicao (Tree and Pelican)
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Federico Herrero

2009

Federico Herrero’s energetic paintings reflect his experiences on the streets of his native San José, Costa Rica, and in the surrounding tropical landscape...

Herculine's Profecy
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Juliana Huxtable

2017

Herculine’s Prophecy by Juliana Huxtable features a kneeling demon-figure on what appears to be a screen-print, placed on a wooden table, which has then been photographed and digitally altered to appear like a book cover, with a title and subtitle across the top, and a poem written across the bottom...

Untitled (Colors) and Untitled (Ghost)
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Alicia McCarthy

2010

A painting reminiscent of a certain “naive primitivism,” Untitled (Colors) and Untitled (Ghost) are representative of McCarthy’s work...

Untitled (Sten-Frenke House #04)
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Luisa Lambri

2007

Custom-built for a silent film star in 1934 in Santa Monica, the Sten-Frenke House is an idiosyncratic icon...

Ammo Bunker
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Mario Ybarra Jr.

2009

Ammo Bunker (2009) is a multipart installation that includes large-scale wall prints and an architectural model...

Forest Gathering N.2
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Gregory Crewdson

2005

Forest Gathering N.2 is part of the series of photographs Beneath the Roses (2003-2005) where anonymous townscapes, forest clearings and broad, desolate streets are revealed as sites of mystery and wonder; similarly, ostensibly banal interiors become the staging grounds for strange human scenarios...

I Want to be Gentleman
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Lu Chunsheng

2000

Lu has developed an oeuvre that consists of characters in bizarre situations...

Untitled (Pasta Painting)
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Scott Reeder

2013

Reeder’s works often start with language—and his Pasta Paintings are no different...

White Minority
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Juan Capistran

2005

White Minority , is typical of Capistran’s sampling of high art genres and living subcultures in which the artist subsumes an object’s high art pedigree within a vernacular art form...