Tim Johnson: Floating Worlds
Tim Johnson makes a welcome return to the Canberra art scene with his solo exhibition Floating Worlds. The exhibition includes recent paintings over the last two years since he featured in the Nancy Sever Gallery鈥檚 inaugural exhibition.
Often described as 鈥榝loating worlds,鈥� Tim Johnson鈥檚 extraordinarily powerful paintings embrace the spiritual iconography of a range of cultures. The paintings are metaphysical landscapes. His is an individual journey of spiritual self-discovery that has an enormous absorptive capacity but which always remains anchored in his unique vision.
Against the background of Aboriginal dot painting Tim Johnson lays out his personal iconography, drawing on Buddhist, Tibetan and Chinese art. His painting style is influenced by these sources in both a technical and philosophical way, and by his collaboration with artists from these cultures.
Artist statement
These new paintings range through familiar areas of interest. They are described as "floating worlds" because images from a diverse set of mainly cultural references float across the canvas in an ambiguous multi-level pictorial space. They are floating as if they were already in the mind, accumulated as memories, associations, thoughts and signs.
This approach to painting is strongly influenced by the artist's visits to Papunya in the 1980's and the show includes many references to this time in the artist's life, drawn from photographs that are beingconstantly re-invented and re-contextualised. The work is still collaborative and references Buddhism, drawing from Tibetan traditions as well as the kind of contemporary buddhist art you might find for sale on the internet.
The Buddhist idea of the Pure Land is used because it represents a better world than the one in which we live and allows the artist to take an idealised, utopian world view. Art is the perfect vehicle for expressing an approach like this, with it's own language of cultural and spiritual signifiers and it's own history of critiquing, documenting and romanticising the social.
UFO's come into the picture as something that is an unknown but, in a sense, of the future. It is something that seems to be beyond our understanding, yet has been pert of world culture for some time now. Exra-terrestrials or off world entities are not that far removed fromthe gods, deities, starmen, visitors and lawgivers of the ancient past.Often described as 鈥榝loating worlds,鈥� Tim Johnson鈥檚 extraordinarily powerful paintings embrace the spiritual iconography of a range of cultures. The paintings are metaphysical landscapes. His is an individual journey of spiritual self-discovery that has an enormous absorptive capacity but which always remains anchored in his unique vision.
Against the background of Aboriginal dot painting Tim Johnson lays out his personal iconography, drawing on Buddhist, Tibetan and Chinese art. His painting style is influenced by these sources in both a technical and philosophical way, and by his collaboration with artists from these cultures.
Tim Johnson has long been one of Australia鈥檚 leading contemporary artists. In 2009 the Art Gallery of NSW and the Queensland Art Gallery both presented a major survey exhibition of his work. He is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, all state and regional galleries and in major corporate and private collections in Australia and overseas.
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Tim Johnson makes a welcome return to the Canberra art scene with his solo exhibition Floating Worlds. The exhibition includes recent paintings over the last two years since he featured in the Nancy Sever Gallery鈥檚 inaugural exhibition.
Often described as 鈥榝loating worlds,鈥� Tim Johnson鈥檚 extraordinarily powerful paintings embrace the spiritual iconography of a range of cultures. The paintings are metaphysical landscapes. His is an individual journey of spiritual self-discovery that has an enormous absorptive capacity but which always remains anchored in his unique vision.
Against the background of Aboriginal dot painting Tim Johnson lays out his personal iconography, drawing on Buddhist, Tibetan and Chinese art. His painting style is influenced by these sources in both a technical and philosophical way, and by his collaboration with artists from these cultures.
Artist statement
These new paintings range through familiar areas of interest. They are described as "floating worlds" because images from a diverse set of mainly cultural references float across the canvas in an ambiguous multi-level pictorial space. They are floating as if they were already in the mind, accumulated as memories, associations, thoughts and signs.
This approach to painting is strongly influenced by the artist's visits to Papunya in the 1980's and the show includes many references to this time in the artist's life, drawn from photographs that are beingconstantly re-invented and re-contextualised. The work is still collaborative and references Buddhism, drawing from Tibetan traditions as well as the kind of contemporary buddhist art you might find for sale on the internet.
The Buddhist idea of the Pure Land is used because it represents a better world than the one in which we live and allows the artist to take an idealised, utopian world view. Art is the perfect vehicle for expressing an approach like this, with it's own language of cultural and spiritual signifiers and it's own history of critiquing, documenting and romanticising the social.
UFO's come into the picture as something that is an unknown but, in a sense, of the future. It is something that seems to be beyond our understanding, yet has been pert of world culture for some time now. Exra-terrestrials or off world entities are not that far removed fromthe gods, deities, starmen, visitors and lawgivers of the ancient past.Often described as 鈥榝loating worlds,鈥� Tim Johnson鈥檚 extraordinarily powerful paintings embrace the spiritual iconography of a range of cultures. The paintings are metaphysical landscapes. His is an individual journey of spiritual self-discovery that has an enormous absorptive capacity but which always remains anchored in his unique vision.
Against the background of Aboriginal dot painting Tim Johnson lays out his personal iconography, drawing on Buddhist, Tibetan and Chinese art. His painting style is influenced by these sources in both a technical and philosophical way, and by his collaboration with artists from these cultures.
Tim Johnson has long been one of Australia鈥檚 leading contemporary artists. In 2009 the Art Gallery of NSW and the Queensland Art Gallery both presented a major survey exhibition of his work. He is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, all state and regional galleries and in major corporate and private collections in Australia and overseas.
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