While I do really like a lot of Chris Johanson's work, I wasn't all that convinced about this show. I'm unashamed to admit that I'm naturally suspicious of conceptual art, or shows that have deliberately uber-rare concepts behind them, which I realise makes me a massive philistine in some/most circles. The afternoon we were viewing the show, an employee from the Gallery and Jeffrey Deitch himself appeared to be showing round a group of important looking folk, so presumably a bunch of people ready to part with their cash. We could over hear the explanation for the show - about how the paintings were positioned so that one can't be viewed without viewing others around them, and how the strange moving contraption in the middle of the show with a mirror on it, related to the solar system or something or other, and I started to get involuntary conceptual art suspicion shudders.

The scale of the main installation structures was certainly impressive - you had to walk through a tunnel in a huge painted wall on arrival inside the gallery - but the concept of the show on the whole just didn't do anything for me. We also found the layout of the paintings: closely positioned in front of one another, a bit annoying! Okay, true to the concept, you couldn't view one without viewing several others, but what that actually meant was awkwardly shuffling around the gallery, slotting yourself in between paintings and bending over to try and see them properly as they weren't at eye level. Call me a boring old misery but I think I'd have got more out of the experience if I had just seen them hung in a row, at eye level, so you could at least take them all in without the faffing around. I just felt their positioning meant you couldn't see any of them very well, rather than getting anything deeper from the experience. I guess I was slightly disappointed because I'd never seen his work in person and was looking forward to seeing his paintings in their own right.

Anyway, despite all that, it was definitely worth checking out and I was definitely glad we went! I'll paste the gallery's press release below as well as links to their proper pictures of the show.

Close up of weird rotating mirror thing:

Some of the paintings plus the camera strap a-dangling in the way:

This is three paintings positioned in front of each other, two obscured by the paintings in front of it.

You can view proper photos of the full installation here on the gallery's website.

And here's the full press release for the show:

September 04, 2008 — October 25, 2008
18 Wooster Street, New York

Totalities, a “contemporary living installation” by Chris Johanson, can be experienced at Deitch Projects from September 4th – October 18th. The exhibition presents the artist’s thoughts on contemporary living, involving, plants, animals, and people, expressed through a multi-media construction incorporating paintings, sculpture, installation and musical performance.

The exhibition’s major theme is the planet earth and its place in the universe. There is also a meditation on the natural world of plants and animals and how they live within themselves, and how they are effected by humans, with an emphasis on recycling. All of the wood used in the exhibition is recycled. Almost all of it comes from New York State and most is retrieved from dumpsters near the artist’s Brooklyn studio and from discarded art shipping crates. The artist asks his friends and acquaintances for scraps of wood, endeavoring to give the wood a third life. He uses the beautiful, natural history of the wood with all its scars to prolong its life and build an entryway back into nature. Johanson talks about the degradation of the planet and the beauty of the world through his art, reminding people of their responsibilities.