Johnny Abrahams: Sympatheia

Vigo Gallery is proud to announce our seventh solo exhibition and tenth anniversary of working with Johnny Abrahams (b. 1979, Tacoma, WA).

 

Abrahams is constantly investigating the ever-present elements, albeit subtly rendered, of tension and drama in his paintings. ‘Throughout the course of my practice I noticed that the drama is always found in the places where the forms within my compositions meet. In the early black paintings it was always in the tiny touch points where the forms joined and in the glancing and ever diminishing negative spaces between them. In the diptychs it's in the vibrating blended line where the two colours come together, and in the new black paintings, it's in all the magnetic chatter that bleeds into the empty spaces between the forms, creating disparate and unpredictable bridges that join them together. Regardless of the different series of paintings, the through-line that seems to connect them is the pursuit of an uneasy truce between stability and tension. I hope this is what makes the paintings engaging.’

 

The show title as well as the umbrella title for the new black series is Sympatheia, which refers to the idea of all things being interwoven in mutual interdependence … that nothing exists alone. It is a concept that Abrahams has been exploring ‘since the beginning of my painting career, and certainly with this new series. I'm always thinking about physics, about the great physical forces that lead to matter and light.’

 

The paintings reference an action that takes place inside suns, namely when two atoms fuse together to create a new element which releases energy in the form of light. This one event/ action not only creates all the heavier elements in the universe that fall together to form complex thinking beings like ourselves, but also generates the light by which we perceive them. ‘It's always struck me as being the largest topical umbrella since everything that we perceive can be traced to this single action, making it the genesis of reality, perception, and even existence for anything with a consciousness. I've chosen Sympatheia because it references these ideas and the illusion of separateness without having to wade into the murky and often alienating language of science. This is where the materiality finds its relevance. Due to its unpredictable nature it counterbalances strict intentions with inevitable accidents making the work more grounded and relatable. For me the tactile nature of the textures creates an almost synaesthesia-like experience that with our eyes we can almost feel the paint as if in our hands like earth or clay, so even though the paint is written into a language of geometric forms that does not occur on the surface in nature, the materiality humanises them, creating another layer of tension between these opposing subjects. I didn't set out to be a matter painter but the more I developed my formal vocabulary and paint language the more I realised that with my disciplined formal language, materiality was the only way for me to bring the paintings out of the cold realm of the intellect and become more immediate, relatable, and present.’

 

In this exhibition, Abrahams also introduces his new Stack Paintings. There is something alive, almost precipitous about the stacking of these individual forms into such a monolithic structure. The individual components have their drama as well but it is contained in the very subtle interaction between the underpainting and the actual colour of the forms which are generally chosen to be non-complementary. For example, pairing reds over greens, or yellows over purples, which are only visible upon close up examination of the individual panels. Like every new step in Abrahams’ career, it is slow and considered and finds its balance after time spent in contemplation.

 

Johnny Abrahams lives and works in London. He has exhibited extensively in the UK and internationally in the US, Korea, Denmark and Belgium. Selected solo exhibitions include Dogs Dinner, Jack Hanley Gallery, New York (2023); You and I Are Earth, Vigo Gallery, London (2022); The natural solace of labor, Sunday-s, Copenhagen (2022); After Hyacinth After Anemone, Vigo Gallery, London (2021); Red weakens an hour, Jack Hanley, East Hampton (2021); In the divinely human state of nobodiness, Jack Hanley, New York (2021); and A sprint for the idler, Romer Young, San Francisco (2021); I am the tortoise but also the cat and the dog, Vigo Gallery, London, 2018; and Interference, Vigo Gallery, London, 2013.

 

For further information, please contact info@vigogallery,com.