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.
 
                                    
                                    Apartment on Cardboard (2000) is an exterior view of an abstracted apartment building...
 
                                    
                                    Barry McGee’s Untitled is a collection of roughly fifty, framed photographs, paintings, and text pieces clustered together in corner...
 
                                    
                                    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...
 
                                    
                                    Reeder’s works often start with language—and his Pasta Paintings are no different...
 
                                    
                                    Modotti’s Diego Rivera Mural: Billionaires Club; Ministry of Education, Mexico D...
 
                                    
                                    Federico Herrero’s energetic paintings reflect his experiences on the streets of his native San José, Costa Rica, and in the surrounding tropical landscape...
 
                                    
                                    The Last Post was inspired by Sikander’s ongoing interest in the colonial history of the sub-continent and the British opium trade with China...
 
                                    
                                    The 10 $1 bills that make up From a Whisper to a Scream (2012) read like instructions in origami...
 
                                    
                                    Lambri’s careful framing in Untitled (Miller House, #02) redefines our understanding of this iconic mid-century modernist building located in Palm Springs, California...
 
                                    
                                    The artist describes the work as “very performative video-pieces but they take on a more sculptural feel...
 
                                    
                                    Destilaciones ( Distillations , 2014) is an installation composed of a group of ceramic pots, presented on the floor and within a steel structure...
 
                                    
                                    Every work in Hoeber’s 2011 series Execution Changes is titled in alphanumeric code...
 
                                    
                                    Iron Sorrows (1990) brings together what are for Alexis Smith common motifs and materials such as scavenged and repurposed metal, and street signage...
 
                                    
                                    Human Quarry is a large work on paper by Leslie Shows made of a combination of acrylic paint and collage...
 
                                    
                                    In Tapitapultas (2012), Donna Conlon and Jonathan Harker comment on mass consumerism and pollution by way of a game they invented...
 
                                    
                                    McCarthy’s Mother Pig performance at Shushi Gallery in 1983 was the first time he used a set, a practice which came to characterize his later works...
 
                                    
                                    The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material...