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:



Other related works, blended automatically

Apartment on Cardboard
© » KADIST

Chris Johanson

2000

Apartment on Cardboard (2000) is an exterior view of an abstracted apartment building...

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...

Radical Hospitality
© » KADIST

Andrea Bowers

2015

Bowers’ Radical Hospitality (2015) is a sculptural contradiction: its red and blue neon letters proclaim the words of the title, signaling openness and generosity, while the barbed wires that encircle the words give another message entirely...

Diego Rivera Mural: Billionaires Club; Ministry of Education, Mexico D.F., Third Gallery
© » KADIST

Tina Modotti

1927

Modotti’s Diego Rivera Mural: Billionaires Club; Ministry of Education, Mexico D...

Untitled (Sten-Frenke House #04)
© » KADIST

Luisa Lambri

2007

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

Herculine's Profecy
© » KADIST

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 (The way in is the way out)
© » KADIST

Alicia McCarthy

2010

A painting reminiscent of a certain “naive primitivism,” Untitled (the way in is the way out) is representative of McCarthy’s work...

Paper Tigers…from a whisper to a scream
© » KADIST

Juan Capistran

2012

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

#17 Pink
© » KADIST

James Welling

2005

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

Golden Bridge
© » KADIST

Lin Yilin

Golden Bridge is part of “Golden Journey”, a series of site-specific performances and installations created during Lin’s residency at Kadist San Francisco...

Untitled (Butterfly)
© » KADIST

Mark Grotjahn

2002

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

Collapse
© » KADIST

Will Rogan

2007

Shot in the streets of Tokyo, Collapse , is a meditation on the passing of time and on the complicated way in which we are smashed between the past and the future...

Mickey Mouse
© » KADIST

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...

Safely Maneuvering Across Lin He Road
© » KADIST

Lin Yilin

1995

For his action, Safely Maneuvering across Lin He Road , Lin built a brick wall on one side of a busy main street in the city of Guangzhou...

Execution Changes #22
© » KADIST

Julian Hoeber

2011

Every work in Hoeber’s 2011 series Execution Changes is titled in alphanumeric code...

Arbol y Pelicao (Tree and Pelican)
© » KADIST

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...

Excerpt (Sealed) (Brown)
© » KADIST

Stephen G. Rhodes

2010

For his series of digital collages Excerpt (Sealed)… Rhodes appropriated multiple images from mass media and then sprayed an X on top of their glass and frame...

Ben Deroy
© » KADIST

Ben Shaffer

2007

Ben Shaffer’s Ben Deroy (2007) is part performance, part self-portrait, and part spiritual vision...