Alumna Sue Johnson '81 in Two Solo Exhibition 'Hall of Portraits from The History of Machines'
Alumna Sue Johnson '81 is featured in two Solo Exhibition Hall of Portraits from The History of Machines in Rockville, Maryland at Gibb Street Gallery and at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia.
The exhibition “proposes an alternate pictorial history in which two objects of desire become one — the household convenience object and the emergent female form. The project looks back to the mid-20th century and identifies this era as a cornerstone in the construction of the modern woman, who, begins at this time to be idealized as sharing attributes with laboring-saving appliances and gadgets “ VisArt stated. All art is “based on authentic sources from mid-century advertising and the artist’s photography of objects in her collection, the resulting women seem familiar yet simultaneously we know that they are actually a highly fictional, patriarchal fantasy. To emphasize this artificiality, each is surrounded by a color-field created by dragging and scraping household devices through the paint.“
VisArts is hosting a workshop with Johnson titled ‘Inside Art: Surrealist Sketchbook Workshop’ on October 11 from 3 pm—6 pm ET. The workshop costs $30 and will include materials. Johnson will be guiding “the class through some surrealist writing exercises and exquisite corpse drawings, and attendees will create their own collages modeled off of Sue’s work.”
Johnson earned an MFA in Painting from Columbia University and a BFA in Painting from Syracuse University. Revisionist in method, her installations and artworks create plausible fictions that run parallel and counter to canonical histories, focusing on topics including the early modern museum, picturing of Nature and women, and the domestic universe and consumer culture. She has developed research-based exhibition projects for the Pitt-Rivers Museum, The Rosenbach Museum and Library, Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum, and the American Philosophical Society Museum. Solo exhibitions have been organized by the Tweed Museum of Art, John Michael Kohler Art Center, University of Richmond Museums, The University of Memphis, Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, and McLean Project for the Arts among others. Award include a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship, a NEA/Mid-Atlantic Foundation Fellowship in Painting, New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, and four Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council. She has been awarded over 25 residency fellowships in Austria, Germany, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, France, and the U.S. Exhibition reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Brooklyn Rail, New Art Examiner, and Art Papers.
Johnson’s Hall of Portraits from the History of Machines is open to the public at Gibbs Street Gallery from September 11 through October 18, 2020 by appointment reservations only. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday 12 pm – 4 pm.
Selections from Hall of Portraits from The History of Machines at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia is open from August 14, 2020 through February 7, 2021.
