El Anarquista y el Tren, Valencia, Spain 2008 (Detail) © Jay Mark Johnson
Boutwell Draper Gallery 82-84 George Street . Redfern NSW 2016 Sydney Australie
Jay Mark Johnson’s current Spacetime photographic series began with rudimentary experiments in 2005. Over the course of this project he increasingly applies the full range of his experiences, from visual arts and cinema to studies in the anthropological and cognitive sciences.
In order to understand the large-format photographs of American artist Jay Mark Johnson it is crucial to grasp their underlying paradox : while the images are created purely photographically, without digital manipulation or staging of a scene, and therefore depict actual events, they still create a perfectly illusory pictorial world. Johnson employs a modified camera which over a set period of time keeps recording the same narrow vertical strip in front of the camera lens and combines the successive photographs into an uninterrupted image that flows evenly from left to right.
Carbon Dating #1, Hazard, Kentucky 2008 (Detail) © Jay Mark Johnson
Jay Mark Johnson was educated at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and has worked as an assistant to Peter Eisenman, as well as for Rem Koolhaas and Aldo Rossi. Works of his are in the permanent collections of the MOMA in New York, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as the Collection Frederick R. Weisman, Los Angeles and the Langen Foundation, Hombroich, Germany. Johnson's varied and prolific career spans theatre and performance art, photography, live musical performance, and journalism.
He co-founded three different alternative television collectives first in Manhattan, and then in Mexico and El Salvador during the eighties at the height of political repression and unrest in those countries. After his return from Latin America he started working in the movie industry and is now a film director with broad experience in visual effects production, having supervised, directed or otherwise contributed to the computer generated imagery for nearly a dozen major studio films and television series, such as Outbreak, Matrix, Titanic, Tank Girl, Moulin Rouge, White Oleander, and music videos for the Red Hot Chili Peppers and others. Jay Mark Johnson lives and works in Los Angeles, USA.
Swept Away #3, Belgrade, Serbia 2008 (Detail) © Jay Mark Johnson
The exhibition presents a selection of the artist's large format color photographs from Prague, Belgrade, Hong Kong, Hazard (Kentucky) and Valencia (Spain). The artworks offer a playful and critically engaging look at the industrialization of the landscape - on the street, in train yards and in open pit coalmines.
A selection of ocean wave timelines produced along the coasts of Mexico and California will also be on show.
Image : El Anarquista y el Tren, Valencia, Spain 2008 (Detail) © Jay Mark Johnson