AARON JOHNSON: OTHER EARTHS

Almine Rech Brussels presents “Other Earths”, Aaron Johnson's first solo exhibition at the gallery. On view from March 11 — April 10, 2021.

Allegory, the grotesque, humor and esotericism animate the paintings of New York-based artist Aaron Johnson, whose new body of work oscillates between genre painting, portraiture and landscape painting. Other Earths consists of five large canvases and a set of small, brightly colored works populated by a host of imaginary characters and monstrous figures.

The luminous, fluid and heterogeneous nature of Johnson's oeuvre is owed above all to a singular creative process. He inherited this practice from Color Field stain painting, pioneered by Helen Frankenthaler and continued by Morris Louis, emblematic artists of American Abstract Expressionism. The artist first spreads his blank canvases out on the floor of his studio, paints a few motifs, and lets highly diluted liquid paint spill out in various shades; then, he lets the laws of chemistry and physics do their work. Thus begins Johnson’s work of improvisation, which centers on immediacy and letting go. His choices and gestures respond to the random movement of the diluted matter and its unpredictable accidents, prolonging them. He adapts the composition over successive mutations and gradations, with motifs and figures appearing and disappearing.

- Charles Barachon

Aaron Johnson’s paintings straddle the balance between unpredictability and control, abstraction and figuration, painterly blurs and minimalist hard-edges. Using a technique of staining the raw canvas, Johnson investigates the fluidity of shapes, forms and colors and the interconnectedness that manifests in between. Multitudes of creatures or figures emerge from the washes of pigment, staring elusively or at times in a soft embrace as different colors bleed from one figure to the next. Paying homage to color field painting and expressionist figuration, Johnson approaches his work as a deep visual experience underlined by a personal understanding of the unpredictability of his own subconscious. His work explores a wide range of human experiences as he depicts each eccentric form charged with a certain aura of darkness and light. 

Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, in 1975, Aaron Johnson currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA. He holds an MFA from Hunter College, New York, 2005.