Vincent Johnson

 Vincent Johnson
 Born in Cleveland, Ohio
 lanyartist@aol.com

 Live and works in Los Angeles 

 MFA Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA 1997 (studied with Mike Kelly, Jack Goldstein, Stephen Prina and Christopher Williams)
 BFA School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1986


Exhibitions:

Informal Architecture, Plug In Gallery, Winnepeg, and Banff Centre, Canada, curated by Anthony Kiendl, 2007(catalog)

Civil Air Defense Project #1, LAXART, Loa Angeles, curated by Lauri Firstenberg, 2007 

Philosophy of Time Travel, Studio Museum in Harlem, (collaboration with Edgar Arceneaux, Olga Koumandouros, Rodney McMillian, Matthew Sloly) curated by Christine Y. Kim, April-July, 2007 (catalog)

Exquisite Crisis and Encounters, Asian/Pacific American Institute of New York University, curated by Yong Soon Min, 2007

Aqua Art Miami, with lemonskyprojects+editions, 2006

Gift Shop, Another Year in LA, Los Angeles, curated by David Stone, 2006

Affair at the Jupiter Hotel, with lemonskyprojects+editions, miami, 2006 

Scope Hamptons, with lemonskyprojects+editions, miami, 2006

NOVA Art Fair, Chicago,with lemonskyprojects+editions, miami, 2006

Scope New York Art Fair, with lemonskyprojects+editions, miami, 2006

Ab Ovo, Steven Turner Gallery, San Francisco; Arena One gallery,Santa Monica

Dark Places, Mapping the Enigma, Santa Monica Museum of Art, curated by Joshua Decter, exhibition design by SERVO (catalog)

Aqua Art Fair Miami Beach, lemonskyprojects+editions, miami, December 2005 (catalog)

Smash & Grab, Locust Projects Miami, November 2005

Joy Ride, Curated by Jane Hart, Miami Beach, 2005

kurzdavordanach, Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, Germany, 2004 (catalog)

Armory Show, Susanne Velmetter Los Angeles Projects, 2004

FADE, African American Artists in Los Angeles, 1993-2003, curated by Malik Gaines, Los Angeles Folk and Craft Museum and the Luckman Museum, Cal State Los Angeles, 2003

The Warrior and Me, (one person show) Adamski Gallery of Contemporary Art, Aachen, Germany 2003

Song Poems, Cohan, Leslie & Brown gallery, New York; Rosamund Felson gallery, Los Angeles; Angstrom Gallery, Dallas, Texas 2002

Freestyle, Studio Museum in Harlem, traveled to the Santa Monica Museum of Art, 2001, curated by Thelma Golden and Christine Y. Kim (catalog)

Transmute, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago 1999, (curated by Joshua Decter)

Dusk, Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle 1999 (curated by Dee Kwok and Kim Collmer)

"I'm Still in Love With You", Twentieth Century Women's Club, Los Angeles, curated by Steven Hull 1998 (catalog)

"Heaven, Private View, P.S.1 Museum New York 1997 (curated by Joshua Decter)

Apocalypso, Banff Arts Center, Banff, Canada 1997

MFA Thesis show (one person show), Art Center College of Design, 1997

Three day Weekend, curated by Diederich Diederichsen, Los Angeles, 1996

Test Strip, one person show, Auckland, New Zealand, 1996, curated by Giovanni Intra

Private Publicity, Art Center College of Design, MFA galleries, 1996

Chance Conference, Six Days in the Desert, Primm, Nevada, 1996

Next II, Cal State Los Angeles, 1995

Writing:

Roundtable discussion for the Philosophy of Time Travel, published by the Studio Museum in Harlem, 2007

The Return of Silent Jones, published in Nothing Moments, A Collaboration of Art, Literature and Design, MOCA Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, 2007

Bad Dream, published in Ab Ovo, by Nothing Moments publishing, Los Angeles, 2006

Watts at Sunset, published in Edgar Arceneaux, 107th st. Watts, by Revolver, Frankfurt, Germany, 2003

Edgar Arceneaux interview by Vincent Johnson, Pomona Art Gallery, California, 2001

The Book of Lies, Volume III, published by Eugenia Butler, 2000

Artist Statement

My project as an artist is based in literary fantasy. It involved the transformation of the inner imagination into externalized and expressive forms of representation. My work is delivered through a number of vehicles, initially through writing, performance, and the spoken word, and in painting, later for several years in writing and photography, and most recently now through writing, sculpture, photography and painting. There always seemed to be a strong drive toward understanding history in my projects, from my reading French literature from Diderot through Camus, to my studying the cinema of Paris and Japan, and of the American underground avant-garde, especially around the time I arrived in California.

In the arena of photography, which I have now worked in for just under a decade, I have employed the strategy of the random wanderer, but far from aimless, as I was always hopeful that I would encounter a strange and wonderful and sometimes incredibly debased body of commercial vernacular or domestic architecture in the Los Angeles region, often at night. Mostly I have driven for miles looking for a compelling location in which to document and investigate, after leaving my car with a couple cameras on my shoulders. In the past five or six years, I became increasing enthralled by the old neon signage who American birthplace was none other than Los Angeles itself. The project developed into one in which the history of the city was being unveiled to me, as I discovered that Los Angeles had some of the first experimental gas stations in the country, as well as some of the first auto courts, and of course LA had some of the first neon motels, which became the literal backdrop to the neon noir cinema. 

The urge to not merely document but to produce fictional worlds in three-dimensions, as well as to re-present aspects of Western cultural history, as I was doing in photography with the commercial vernacular architecture, led to the current projects - Philosophy of Time Travel, which simulates the time travel crashing of Constantin Brancusi's seminal, classic, moderist work into the main exhibition space of the Studio Museum in Harlem, followed by the re-presentation of a 1956 Chrysler Air Raid Siren and a Home Shelter Series family underground fallout shelter at LAXART.

Producing such large-scale sculptural works has led me to consider working upon other projects that delve into both history and fantasy, including a project I have in mind called Richard Neutra House/La Brea Tar Pits. The entire installation would appear to be made of tar pit ooze, and would play upon the notion that Neutra has emerged from the depths beneath Los Angeles, and not from the Viennese architecture school in California.

Vincent Johnson

May 8, 2007