The paintings in On a Precipice explore the uncertainty of the times, and the place of the individual in these times. Whether toeing the edge, dancing in the uncertainty, just trying to stay balanced, or triumphantly looking down from the top, the works are a contemplation of the individual, adjusting and readjusting to a complex world that is changing underneath us.
Baltimore artist Teddy Johnson received his BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art, his MFA in drawing and painting from the University of Georgia, and studied painting and Italian Art for a year in Cortona, Italy. His paintings can be found in private collections throughout the United States and have been exhibited publicly in the United States, Italy, and Korea. He currently teaches Art at both Anne Arundel Community College in Arnold, MD and Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV. His paintings play with the traditions of Western narrative painting as a forum to explore human psychology, color, and contemporary culture.
The colorful scenes of city rooftops seem to belong more to the world of Technicolor than real life, and the subject of the paintings themselves—figures balanced precariously atop ledges and roof tops—calls to mind the police chase that left James Stewart dangling from a San Francisco high-rise.
Of course, a comparison to the painter so often linked to the cinematic Master of Suspense, Edward Hopper, seems apt, but Johnson appears only to share a predilection for everyday urban life and vivid colors with the mid-century artist. Instead of mystery or apprehension, Johnson engenders his figures with a sense of elation that makes them capable of standing on one foot on the thin pinnacle of a roof. The energy and literal buoyancy of these figures is especially interesting considering that the scenes are most likely borrowed from the artist’s place of residence, Baltimore, whose traditionally industry-based economy has recently undergone dramatic changes that include rising crime. But as Johnson’s figures suggest, a call for optimism could be in order.
Rebecca Brantley, Athens Flagpole magazine
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Purchase Tickets
The first in a two-part series prepared for UnionDocs juxtaposing select contemporary video pieces (Seoungho Cho, Dillon Dewaters) with structurally-oriented 16mm and 8mm.
The films will serve (in part) as a commentary on (and permutations of) Lars Van Trier’s recent film, with the films shown tonight releasing an idea about the relation between trauma, informe, and the anamorphic. The anamorphic as a phenomenon of distortion (as an extension of a recent show at 16Beaver about psychedelic/expressionistic anamorphosis) and the use of luminosity, suspended spaces, and formless color are seen through the lens of structural depictions of space-time, where formally rigorous editing schemes convey an idea about the collapse of trauma, gesture, and desire into the singularity of nature.
Works to be shown tonight include Takashi Ito’s moebial Spacy (1981), Standish Lawder’s Corridor (1970), Cho’s mimetic meditation on teeming pond life Show Your Tongue (2005), and Lawrence Weiner’s structural/conceptual art-porn A Bit of Matter and a Little Bit More (1976), shot in what appears to be night vision and staged in New York at The Kitchen by Weiner.
Readings for the series will include Roberto Harari’s How James Joyce Made His Name (on Joyce, the Late Lacan, and the idea of singularity), Brian Aldiss’ Joycean psychedelic epic Barefoot in the Head, Elfriede Jelinek, and Cady Noland, On the Metalanguage of Evil. Photocopies of texts will be made available at the screening.
Brian McCarthy is a curator and videomaker living and working in Brooklyn. He has worked for Anthology Film Archives, the Filmmaker’s Coop, and EAI. He currently programs a series of experimental film and video on the politics of abstraction for the 16Beaver Group in the financial district.
This series is presented with 16Beaver, and coincides with an ongoing series there curated by Brian McCarthy.
TakashiIto Spacy
10 minutes, 16mm transfer
Kurt Kren Asyl (asylum)
9 minutes, 16mm
Leslie Thornton Jennifer Where Are You?
10 minutes, 16 mm
Lawrence Weiner A Bit of Matter and a Little Bit More
23 minutes, video
David Baker A Secret Location5 minutes, video
Seoungho Cho Show Your Tongue
6 minutes, video
Dillon Dewaters Road
10 minutes, video
Frans Zwartjes Living
15 minutes, 16mm transfer
Storm de Hirsch Divinations
6 minutes, 16mm
Standish Lawder Corridor
23 minutes, 16mm
Chick Strand Waterfall
3 minutes, 16mm
Peter Kubelka Arnulf Rainer
6 minutes, 16mm
Dani Leventhal 54,36,18
16 minutes, video
Night II (coming up in February):
Ernie Ehr Serene Velocity 23 minutes, 16 mm
Greg Sharits Transfer 18 minutes, 8mm
John Lennon, Yoko Ono Erection 23 minutes, 16mm
Martin Arnold Passage a L’acte 12 minutes, 16mm
Pipilotti Rist Pickelporno 12 minutes, video (playing during discussion)
Seoungho Cho Salt Creek 16 minutes, video
Shalom Gorewitz I Want You 8 minutes, video
Takahiko Iimura Ai! Love 10 minutes, 16mm
322 Union Ave | Brooklyn, NY 11211 | info at uniondocs.org | www.uniondocs.org
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