DEWDRINKER
OR
The Intolerable Strangeness of Vegetable Consciousness
NICHOLAS WILLIAM JOHNSON
Inauguration: Thursday, 17 November 2016, 6-9pm 17 November – 23 December 2016
Montoro12 Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in Italy by American artist Nicholas William Johnson (b. 1982 Honolulu, Hawaii). The artist will present a new series of paintings never shown before. The title of the exhibition refers to an amorphous and entangled host of ideas, personified by the character of the DEWDRINKER who drinks the morning dew, collected on a rose, on a lily, from a dripping pomegranate, glistening pear, spectral fig, coral mushroom, indigo banana leaf. Thus imbibed the DEWDRINKER gains a fleeting access to vegetable consciousness, the rose flavoured liquor of the droplet on a petal, itself transformed by that blossom, imparts its new information as it passes DEWDRINKER’s lips. For his sensual plant paintings which sprout exotic fruit and conjure up an utopia such as Henry More’s (his invented language is featured in two works on paper), Johnson uses acrylic, spray paint, marble dust, string and fabric appliqué. The Romantic sublime is revisited in light of the current “end of the “anthropocene”, a human-centered geological age which is shifting due to climate change. Johnson’s recent research focuses on plant consciousness, which is not only a prevalent topic of ancient mythologies and indigenous shamanic knowledge, but also of current academic studies. A major inspiration for this series can be found in the second volume of C S Lewis science fiction trilogy Perelandra, which tells the voyage of Mr. Ransom to the planet Perelandra (Venus), a celestial paradise of swirling colour, pleasure and an unfallen sexuality. There he discovers the taste of a fruit which was “like the discovery of a totally new genus of pleasures, something unheard of among men…” In fact Johnson’s paintings can only be described as lush “jungles”, with ripe fruit connoting an unabashed sensuality and an abundance of color that is titillating the eye. With these works Johnson seems to attempt to unite the “binary split” which the Enlightenment caused – that “gulf in perception” that divides human and vegetable consciousness. As he quotes Lewis: “The old philosophical distinction which narrows the definition of consciousness to agency, eased the burden of intolerable strangeness which this universe imposes on us by dividing it into halves and encouraging the mid never to think of both in the same context.” Looking carefully at these extraordinary paitings, we can perhaps get a glimpse not only of the DEWDRINKER but also of the implied consciousness of these exotic plants.
Nicholas William Johnson lives and works in London. He received his MA in Painting fro the Royal College of Art, London (2014) and his BA in Philosophy from King’s College Halifax, Nova Scotia (2005). Recent exhibitions include: Podium, Oslo, Norway (2016), House of Egorn: London Lounge, London (2016), Newton, Wales, UK (2016), Saatchi Gallery at the Churchill, London (2015), G39, Cardiff (2015); Lychee One, London (2015); Catlin Art Prize, London (2015); Saatchi New Sensations, London (2014); Kate Neave at Frameless, London (2014); Degree Show, Royal College of Art, London (2014); Painter-Stainer’s Prize, London (2013); Flat Time House, London (2011). Johnson was artist-in-residence at City and Guilds Art School, London (2015). He was shortlisted for the Catlin Art Prize (2015), the Caldwell Award (2014) and the Valerie Beston Prize (2014). Johnson has received artist grants from the Province of Nova Scotia and the Vermont Studio Centre where he was artits in residence (2011).