In the Studio / Galen Johnson

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/04/2011 (5578 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s intricate work, and then there’s the work of Galen Johnson. He takes complexity to entirely new level, creating hyper-detailed and organic structural drawings that have an air of both life and death. An architecture graduate from the University of Manitoba and currently a graphic designer, he’s had shows at RAW and Semai Gallery in Winnipeg, 2of2 Gallery (all solo) and LE Gallery in Toronto, Ont. Johnson is currently working a project with filmmaker Guy Maddin and the dramatically hip band Sparks for the Los Angeles Film Festival. Basically, this guy excels at everything artistic — including having the wittiest answers for the following questions.

 

How would you describe your work?

Most recently I’ve been doing really detailed, surreal drawings of architecture and landscapes in varying states of construction and/or decomposition.

 

What goes into making one of your pieces?

I start by doing a detailed abstract pencil drawing or collage. Once I’m satisfied with the composition, the way it’s sitting on the paper, all those formal design-y things, I’ll switch my brain to representation mode. So I’ve got to make all these little bits of abstract nonsense into scaled architectural elements — brick walls, hydro dams, shattered glass, shards of earth, chunks of concrete, reservoirs, roadways. Stuff that we see encounter every day and maybe ignore or take for granted.

 

What/who inspires/influences your work?

Anything built. I take inspiration more from “unsuccessful” buildings. Architectural follies — like that wooden skyscraper in Russia or Ryugyong Hotel in North Korea. Any building that reflects the eccentricities of individuals or the failures of societies as a whole. If Winnipeg ever gets that indoor waterpark, I’m sure it will be an endless source of inspiration. I also like outsider art. I can’t really claim to be an outsider artist, but I am predisposed to the obsessive detail, neurotic repetition, shiny things, and uncontrived uninhibitedness of it all.

 

What are you trying to say with your work?

“HEY, GIRLS! I’m not that good at sports but I can do these little pictures!” It doesn’t work as an artist statement (or a pickup line), though, so I’ve been trying to find a different way of approaching that question. I suppose I’ve always wanted to reconcile the uninhibited energy of abstract painting and outsider art with the chilly precision of architectural and more “applied” forms of drawings. They’re sort of irreconcilable, so I’ll just keep failing. I’ve accepted failure, though; it takes the pressure off and I find my work becomes less contrived and less inhibited when I’m aware that I’m failing at some grand intention.

 

What is it like being an artist in Winnipeg today?

I can’t really compare it to anywhere else, having spent all of my adult life here, but from what I hear, we’ve got it pretty good. There’s lots of little galleries, and it appears everyone is an artist — perhaps because we’re all bad at sports.

 

For more information on Johnson’s work, visit his website at www.galenhjohnson.com