Basically Chris Johanson is awesome.
The photos above are from the Chris Johanson show at Dietch Projects here in New York. Completely constructed from found wood around the New York area, Johanson’s installtion is pretty incredible. Having followed his work for years now, what was most pleasing for me is to see how his work has evolved, from punk/ skateboarder/ graffiti art to now utilizing more abstraction in his installations. To adequately talk about his work would take awhile, so the photos are above. I see way to much “skateboarder” artwork in galleries here, and its nice to see an artist evolve from that as a starting point, rather than remaining complacent in it.
Ben Pinder, my studio mate and good friend has a show up in Philadelphia. The show revolves around the theme of global warming, so Ben created several drawings, a video, a book, and a polar bear that all refers to a fictional character that is supportive of global warming in order to create a new America in Antarctica. The result is a hilarious tounge-in-cheek presentation in which the rhetoric is eerily similar to hardcore Palin supporters. I only have three photos of it below but you can find out more about his work and the show in these links:
http://benpinder.info/
http://www.youtube.com/user/barrygibes
http://www.philasculptors.org/globalwarming/index.htm
I’ll post more photos of our studio once we have our open studios.
