Terence Dick reviews Johnson's "Prom Storm"

"To paraphrase Mike Kelley, “an adolescent is a dysfunctional adult and art is dysfunctional reality”: an equation that might explain something of our culture’s ongoing fascination with things teenage. There is a certain appeal to the heightened emotions of youth; it certainly makes for good melodrama; though, having spent the last couple years working with living, breathing young folk, the reality is nowhere near as entertaining as the finely crafted version we are exposed to in films and on television. This Platonic Ideal of adolescence sets the standard even in its carefully scripted failures. For those of us realists, however, who can’t abide by such groundless conceptions, our only recourse is to the material truths of our own past. The trials and tribulations (and sometimes triumphs, but mostly trials and tribulations) of our high school years feed the pool in which we reflect, looking for some clue to our adult selves."

"Kirsten Johnson’s series of prom-themed paintings at KWT Contemporary are rooted in such a return. The short video that accompanies the exhibition is essential viewing for those of us who didn’t peak at graduation. Her refusal to succumb to nostalgia is the first step in a critical, rather than celebratory take on that fraught party at the precipice of adulthood. Intercut with footage of Johnson from the past and a present-day soliloquy on that past are scenes from the photo-shoot that resulted in the paintings. The models she chose to play the part of the revelers seem a tad old to me, but they manage to get the moves of a dancing mass down pat, and the artist does a swell job of capturing those gestures and expressions on canvas. The puzzle is completed with the background newspaper images of storm damage. Without the video, this conflation of two forms of disaster is too simplistic, so even though she distances herself from the autobiographical elements of the project (having the models read her diaries, instead of revisiting them herself), the specific circumstances of Johnson’s past are the real story here."

Read the rest of Terence Dick's column here

A brief trailer of Johnson's short film can be seen here

Kirsten Johnson and Yvonne Singer: June 2, 2011

Two new solo exhibitions open tomorrow,  June 2, 2001.  Join us at the opening reception from 5 to 7 pm.  Prom Attire Optional!

Kirsten Johnson and Yvonne Singer will both be present at the reception. This will be Johnson's third solo exhibition with us. We are pleased to welcome Yvonne Singer for her first solo exhibition at  KWTcontemporary. Singer is an established artist, distinguished and respected for both her artistic output (primarily text-based conceptual installations in recent years), and for her academic contributions to the Canadian contemporary art scene as Professor of Fine Art at York University.

Kirsten Johnson
"Prom Storm"

Deliberately theatrical, provocative, yet humourous: Johnson's paintings explore the specificity and range of human emotions. Her paintings play with the stylistic traditions of classical portraiture while subverting the formality in favour of social commentary.
In her new series, "Prom Storm" Johnson's oil on wood paintings present portraits of adolescent prom-goers superimposed on tornadoes and other images of extreme weather conditions culled from the internet and historical archives.  Her bold, graphic colours lie just below (and sometimes above) the surface of nature. Utilizing realism to the extreme, moments are frozen in time, dynamic actions and reactions are caught in a freeze-frame.
The subjects of the paintings become characters whose personalities are exposed to reveal the storm of emotion and hormones that constitute the typical adolescent Prom experience. Desire, hope, envy, disdain and regret are fully on view. You may recognise yourself.
Accompanying the exhibition of paintings, Johnson presents a video installation which is at turns funny, self-depreciating and poignant, chronicling her own adolescent experience, as understood from her now adult and mature perspective.


Yvonne Singer
"I I I I wa wa wa want"

"I I I I wa wa wa want"  is an installation with neon letters, mounted on a pair of opposite-facing mirrors. The self-reflecting mirrors create the illusion of repeating the words to infinity as well as implicating the viewers who are also reflected in the mirrors. The work speaks to our desires.  Neon signs are familiar signifiers of commerce in our urban setting and the media advertising that surrounds us promotes our endless desiring. Who doesn't want something? Who hasn't looked longingly at a shop window?
..."if only" is an excerpt from a longer neon work with 3 other phrases; I should have, I could have, I would have... ...if only. The phrases are a lament that references regret and longing for unfulfilled desires as well as a response to social expectations. By reading the words, the viewer is at once in both a public and private space.
...."I do, I undo, I redo" is a phrase borrowed from a drawing by Louise Bourgeois, who wrote these words to describe her working process. For Singer, the phrase succinctly describes the creative process and also functions as a metaphor for the endless routine of our daily life. It can be interpreted pessimistically as a dead end or optimistically as the opening of creative possibilities. The script version (a rendering of Singer's own quirkily charming handwriting) of this plexi/acrylic installation is presented as a multiple, in an edition of three in each of several colours. The typographic version of the same phrase consists of Singer's modification of classic Helvetica, presented in three one-off renderings in red, blue or black.

Trailer for "Prom Storm" by Kirsten Johnson

More about this in our next post, but for now, a little teaser-of-a-trailer for Kirsten Johnson's exhibition "Prom Storm": new paintings and video installation. Opening at KWT this Thursday, June 2, reception from 5 to 7 (prom attire optional).

(Please note our  address is 624 Richmond St. West,  at Bathurst and 1 block south of Queen)