Chris Johanson, Contemporary Landscapes: Kavi Gupta | 835 W. Washington Blvd. Chicago, IL, 60607

Kavi Gupta Gallery is pleased to present our second solo exhibition titled Contemporary Landscapes by Portland-based artist Chris Johanson.

Chris Johanson is well known for his paintings, sculptures, and installations depicting the human experience and the resulting physical world they inhabit together. Johanson has developed his own personal pictorial language mixing many mediums and what he refers to as “Selfish Expressionism” or “The Life Arts”. Over time objects such as the overabundant stacked living spaces in a crowded city, and the packaged foods found in supermarkets conform into simple brightly colored patterns and shapes. As Johanson says in his own words “I just think that as humans, we are much more honestly rendered as abstract forms”.

Chris Johanson’s solo exhibition created for Kavi Gupta Gallery subtly titled “Contemporary Landscapes” will include several large paintings on recycled wood, a sprawling installation and multiple works on paper continuing on this theme of abstraction and our changing world both psychologically and physically. Personal conflicts as well as political ones manifest differently in every individual. Whether it is through praying, meditation, yoga, shopping or drugs, people find a way to ignore, distract, cope and preoccupy themselves in a time when the world can seem hopeless. Though Johanson does find a silver lining, as he rediscovers through abstraction, beauty in nature, animals, love and humans despite how ugly things often appear on the surface.

“You are invited to be a part of the celebration of life through the arts”. - Chris Johanson

Chris Johanson (b.1968) lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Johanson has exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the U.S. Recent solo exhibitions include Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; Jack Hanley Gallery, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico; The Modern Institute, Glasgow; SFMOMA, San Francisco; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Recent group exhibitions include the 8th Istanbul Biennial; ’Of Mice and Men’ the 4th Berlin Biennial and ‘Monuments for the USA at the CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco.