In-Cells: Courtney Johnson

Courtney Johnson, Cards, 2008, from Polaroid Emulsion Lift. Courtesy of the artist

UM Wynwood Project Space

January 10 - January 31, 2009

By Carlos Suarez De Jesus

For her intriguing solo show, Courtney Johnson mined the conventions of a fading technology as the grist for her mill of grainy, ambivalent images, as if intentionally challenging the will to categorize.

Some of her quick-draw shots exuded an immediate tension reminiscent of a fumbled moment or displayed a seemingly effortless knack for knocking the image into disarray.

The show featured an expansive series of color Polaroid emulsion lifts, brimming with a dog-eared family album aesthetic, enhanced by what might have appeared to be technical glitches, but which were actually controlled in an almost fuzzy, red-eyed way.

Johnson’s evocative images brimmed with rips, wrinkles and bubbles of the gelatinous emulsion which she later scanned, enlarged and digitally printed to create a sense one was viewing her subjects through a rainy pane of glass.

Although her images were carefully structured, some of Johnson’s pictures seem simple in the extreme: a Midwestern barn with a wheat silo next to it, a waifish teen wearing sneakers and a prom dress, a field of dandelions, a pair of lawn chairs, and elderly couple sitting on a bus bench or a young man dangling leisurely from a tree.

Some of the pictures were easily confused with portraits in the guise of a casual snapshot.

In Cards, a large vinyl banner that engulfed a gallery wall, a boy is depicted wearing a shirt and tie while intensely studying his poker hand at a kitchen table. Next to him a vase of flowers adds a subtle hue of character to the passing quotidian moment. Through her process Johnson created a texture that gave the work’s surface a fragmented vibe, conveying the impression it could have been printed on translucent crocodile skin.

In addition to her collection of small and medium-size works, Johnson also exhibited an installation featuring a glass table, four bright beanbag chairs and a glowing globe in a visitor-friendly nook of the gallery space. Around the lamp, she arranged a merry-go-round of stereoscopes containing slide film.

These nifty gadgets were a throwback to childhood memories and were full of pictures of girls playing hula hoop, holding a cake in a bathroom or glaring at the viewer while nursing a daiquiri.

Johnson’s romp with diversity was arranged intelligently allowing each series, regardless of scale, to command its own space.

Each corner of the gallery contained slight variations on the same themes allowing one to register them slowly without feeling toyed with.

For all its modest profile and brief length, “In-Cells” was nothing short of a revelation, marking Courtney Johnson as an emerging talent to be reckoned with.