simen johan`s wildlife illusions

PHOTO BOOTH
SIMEN JOHAN’S WILDLIFE ILLUSIONS
By The New Yorker, 8:02 am
“Untitled #183,” from the series “Until the Kingdom Comes,” 2015.
© SIMEN JOHAN, COURTESY YOSSI MILO GALLERY, NEW YORK
The photographer Simen Johan gained notoriety in the nineteen-nineties for his creepy images
of adolescents—doll-faced children and child-faced adults whose likenesses Johan stitched
together using an unusual combination of darkroom techniques and early digital manipulation.
For the images in his ongoing project “Until the Kingdom Comes,” begun in the mid-aughts, he
again made use of subtle digital manipulations, this time to push familiar wildlife imagery into
the realm of the not quite real. The most recent images in the series, which will go on display
at Yossi Milo Gallery on May 26th, include a group of sea lions caught between blackness and
sunlight, appearing as ghostly forms sinking into the sea. A zebra photographed at the San Diego
Zoo and placed in front of foliage from Florida and Bali appears to blend into its incongruous
surroundings. These composite images are hyperrealistic in their textures and colors, and in the
captivating intensity of the animals on display. Yet they work like visual snags, holding our eye
as we try to adjust to their destabilizing shifts in logic. Camouflage “appeals to me because it’s
nature’s way of confusing the things we see,” Johan says. “We tend to look to nature for
authenticity, but even here we encounter illusion.”
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/simen-johans-wildlife-illusions
AMALGAMATION OF ANTHROPOMORPHIC AND ZOOMORPHIC IN THE
NEW SIMEN JOHAN EXHIBITION AT YOSSI MILO
Art Exhibitions, Digital Art, Photography• Lorenzo Pereira
Untitled #181, 2015
From the series Until the Kingdom Comes
C-Print
If you are a fan of contemporary photography, you like digital art as well, and not so realistic
representations, then you shouldn’t miss the upcoming Simen Johan exhibition at Yossi Milo Gallery in New
York. On the list of the best photography galleries in the world, Yossi Milo Gallery is specialized in photobased art, video and works on paper. Many big names regularly exhibit at this art space, and now the time
has come for Norwegian contemporary artist, photographer and sculptor – Simen Johan. A
multidisciplinary artist, Johan’s art cannot be strictly classified as realistic, surrealistic or abstract. It has
elements of several important styles, while his extraordinary technique offers a unique visual experience.
The Art of Simen Johan
Born in 1973 in Norway, Simen Johan lives and works in New York City. The world he creates through his art is a world full
of contrasts – a sort of combination of figuration and direct observation. As the artist once said: I strive to create tension
and confuse the boundaries between opposing forces, such as beauty and brutality…or the familiar and the
otherworldly, the natural and the artificial, the amusing and the eerie. I often feel like I am attempting to reconcile the
irreconcilable as I explore the paradoxical nature of existence. As we already mentioned, he combines several
techniques – the more traditional one with digital. Johan uses digital technology for a long period of time. It was during
the 1990s when he began using digital technology, mixing it with traditional darkroom techniques. Hybrid form of an
image is the result of such practice, where we can see animals and environment combined with elements of painting
and cinema in coherent compositions. With his practice, Johan perfectly merges digital art with photography, while his
sculptures are combination of anthropomorphism and zoomorphism.
Photography and Sculpture
The visitors of the Simen Johan exhibition will have an opportunity to see new photographic works and sculptures by the
artist. When it comes to the Johan’s photographs, the relationship between the subject-matter and the context make
these images a bit surrealistic. However, it’s difficult to speak about surrealism since the subjects and their surroundings
are presented quite realistically. We could say these compositions are poetic, with tensions between reality and fiction.
Johan made these work in different locations around the world, and they usually represent (for example) animals in
somewhat abstract surroundings. When it comes to Johan’s sculptures, they are made from clay, fabric and feathers
using a method akin to his singular image-making process. This approach allows the artist to continuously reshape a form
until the “right” image appears.
Simen Johan Exhibition at Yossi Milo
Simen Johan has been exhibited widely across the world. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Cleveland Museum of Art and
many others. This will be the artist’s ninth exhibition with the Yossi Milo Gallery. Parallel with the show at Yossi Milo, there is
also an exhibition at Scandinavia House at 58 Park Avenue, New York, with additional photographs by the artist (the
show is titled Another North: Landscape Reimagined and lasts from May 6 until August 6, 2016). The Simen Johan
exhibition will be on view from May 26 until August 10, 2016 at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York. The artist’s reception is
scheduled for Thursday, May 26, 6-8pm.
Featured Images: Simen Johan – From the series Until the Kingdom Comes, Untitled #181, 2015, Digital C-Print, © Simen Johan,
Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York; Simen Johan – From the series Until the Kingdom Comes, Untitled #183, 2015, Digital CPrint, © Simen Johan, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York. All Images © Simen Johan, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
http://www.widewalls.ch/simen-johan-exhibition-yossi-milo-new-york/
http://proof.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/11/the-animals-that-live-only-in-our-dreams/
November 14 – 20, 2013
There’s a vague otherworldliness to the animals and landscapes in artist Simen Johan’s “Until the Kingdom Comes”
series, currently on display at the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York. In one photograph a dense fog descends on a family of
giraffes, their necks all but disappearing into the clouds. In another, small monkeys feast on pomegranates, the idyllic
setting backlit by hazy sunlight. Yet these vignettes are not candid nature shots; almost all of Johan’s prints are digitally
constructed, seamless collages of various photographs that are then stitched together to create fantastical images of
animals in unexpected environments.
The result is an overwhelming sense of the uncanny, as viewers struggle to differentiate between the authentic and the
artificial. This is most acutely felt in Johan’s depiction of Peruvian yellow-hooded blackbirds inhabiting a tar pit in an
Icelandic volcano. The work takes on a eerie tone, and even the pops of bright color seem ominous against the gloomy
landscape.
Through December 7, at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York; yossimilo.com
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2013/02/05/what-boston-area-art galleries/3BSspuVIBlAW17oi3Cd4hL/story.html
The Eerie: Simen Johan
October 31, 2011
Interview by Rosecrans Baldwin
In Simen Johan’s series “Until the Kingdom Comes,” we find an otherworldly crop of
animals dropped into unfamiliar settings, where the humans appear to have expired.
As Johan describes below, his work blends traditional portraiture with digital
techniques, obtaining animals from a variety of sources and dropping them into
settings he has photographed elsewhere.
“Until the Kingdom Comes” will be on display at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, Nov.
3-Dec. 23, 2011.
All images © Simen Johan, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York.
TMN: Describe for us how this series began in your mind.
Simen Johan: This work evolved over time as I experimented with different things. I never have a clear
conception of an image or sculpture before I begin, but the final pieces I develop inevitably become decisive
expressions of how I experience the world around me. The work echoes my curiosity about life—about our
desires, fears, and darkest intuitions, and about consciousness as a whole, which might be the most familiar
and mysterious aspect of our lives.
TMN: How does a photograph come together?
SJ: I photograph animals that live in zoos, farms, or nature preserves, or sometimes that have been
taxidermied in museum dioramas, or found as road kill. I then situate them in settings that I have
constructed from images I’ve photographed elsewhere.
TMN: Are you depicting a dystopian world? A post-human world?
SJ: Some images have a post-apocalyptic vibe to them, but it’s all open to interpretation. I like to evoke the
future as uncertain—one that we dream will bring eternal bliss, yet fear will end in annihilation.
TMN: Going back to “Evidence of Things Unseen,” there’s often a lot of beauty living alongside brutality in
your work. Is the world a terrifying place?
SJ: Our thoughts can be terrifying, but the world is evidently a friendly one or else it wouldn’t cater so well
to our survival.
When working on an image, I strive to create tension and confuse the boundaries between opposing forces,
such as beauty and brutality as you say, or the familiar and the otherworldly, the natural and the artificial,
the amusing and the eerie. I often feel like I am attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable as I explore the
paradoxical nature of existence, its simultaneous abundance of beauty and horror.
TMN: Do you find yourself motivated artistically by political events?
SJ: Not particularly. Politics is largely culture and time-specific and I’m interested in the things that are
universal and inherent.
TMN: What are you working on now?
SJ: I’m always working on many things, and I’m never sure what they will turn into until they’re done.
http://www.themorningnews.org/gallery/the-eerie
Best of Nashville 2011:
Arts, Music & Entertainment Writers' Choice
http://flavorwire.com/159586/photo-gallery-simen-johans-majestic-beasts
April 27, 2010
Frames From Fiction: Kids Today
Posted by Jessie Wender
This week’s fiction story, “La Vita Nuova,” by Allegra Goodman, had me researching images of
children. The photographs I found most intriguing were artists’ recreations of youthful fantasy.
Julie Blackmon’s photograph “Powerade” (2005) opens the story. The young boy in the
photograph is Blackmon’s nephew, and she writes that the image and title are a play on “the
strange notion that [sports drinks] can give you ‘power.’ ”
Of his series “Evidence of Things Unseen,” Simen Johan writes that he is portraying “a child’s
world in which the primal need to explore and search for meaning manifests itself in mysterious
and often ritualistic forms of creativity and play,” and that the images explore “the search for
answers or some sort of redemption from meaninglessness.” “Untitled #86” (2000) “depicts a
moment of childhood curiosity leading to unexpected discoveries.”
Truth Beauty
· April 24th, 2009
Artist Simen Johan trucks in the demystification of artful dodging. Regardless
of what medium he works in or the subject he chooses at any given moment,
whether it is live llamas, roadkill fox, or children, forcing us to look behind our
rationalizations is foremost on his mind. A former film student from Sweden,
Simen switched to photography when he moved to the States out of
necessity, since it was too costly to pursue film. He wouldn’t, however, call
himself a photographer in the traditional sense.
The primal experience of life is what he aims to get at, which is why animals
and children are subjects that interest him. “We act on desires and fears,” he
says, “rather than reason.” Adults tend to reason around their efforts to enable
pursuit of that which is desired. Johan contends that we want truth and answers but don’t always get the answers
that satisfy us, which leads us to fabricate answers we like from whole
cloth. Children and animals are privy to the primal instincts that adults
craft careful disguises for. The subversion of expectation effected by
Johan’s work jolts you out of your comfort zone and causes you to rethink what you are observing, even if it is an albino deer slightly more
brilliant than you have ever beheld (if you have ever beheld and albino
deer).
Though his current medium of choice is photography, his creative process
has less to do with capturing a moment in time than it does with careful
craftmanship. Johan is not interested in the instantaneousness that is the
advantage of the medium. He cares more about constructing an image
over time that may involve a painstaking synthesis of skies from Norway,
terra firma from Spain and animals from dioramas taken on the sly. In
fact, for his 2006 series Until the Kingdom Comes, he snuck into the
Museum of Natural History with a mini tri-pod, a glass blanket and an intern to shoot moose.
But while even his taxidermied subjects look more real than the living, most of the animals he
currently photographs are alive—just very very still. His work speaks to the majesty, humor and
irony of living.
Johan’s very early photography, produced while he was still in school, utilizes black and white
images of children, sometimes sexualized. But this subject was a choice guided by his interest
in combining “truth and opposites” rather than by a desire to make a statement about sexuality,
which is beside the point. And some might miss his subtle objective, as perhaps Michael Jackson did when he
purchased Johan’s book, Room to Play, containing Johan’s early work, which book was confiscated during
Jackson’s 2005 trial, along with other books and paraphernalia, from his Neverland Ranch.
The possessions of pop-stars aside, Johan’s next project might involve sculpture rather than photography or he
may soon turn his attention to his initial attraction, film. But though his medium may change, his objective will stay
trained on awakening us to our inner urges.
···
Rozalia Jovanovic
NEWS & FEATURES
March 29, 2006
The AI Eye: Editors' Picks of Art for Sale
In this week’s picks (March 29, 2006), we feature three-dozen works from galleries in
Berlin, Los Angeles (LA), New York (NYC) and San Francisco (SF), ranging in price from
$500 to $550,000 for a Tom Wesselmann painting (plus some six-figure Fairfield Porter
works).
Simen Johan
"Untitled #136 (Foxes)" (2006)
From the series "Until the Kingdom Comes"
Digital C-print
60" x 60"
152.4 x 152.4 cm
$12,000 (Edition of 5)
Yossi Milo Gallery (NYC)
© Simen Johan, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery
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PROFILE
SE E I N G IS BELIEVING
P H OTO G R A P H S B Y S I M E N J O H A N
When William Henry Fox Talbot first began to experiment
visual narrative. So an innocuous suburban driveway
with his “mouse-trap” camera - a small, pinholed box
and garage acquire a patina of runic graffiti and serve
with a piece of paper film inside - he delighted to pore
as backdrop for an uncanny ritual: a boy in a paper-bag
over his tiny views of the world. Surely the thrill must
mask wields a strange staff over a dead goose.
have come from stealing a march on reality, rendering
Talbot notwithstanding, photography’s first deviation
the world without the effort of the hand, like being God’s
from ordinarily observed reality began with the subject,
spy. The quest to colonize the visible has been photog-
or rather, the pose. People couldn’t hold still and be
raphy’s raison d’etre ever since. Yet the mousetrap cap-
captured in situ, so they had to be dragged into some
tured something else, a different spirit, an oblique angle
kind of studio. And since their “real” selves and
of vision that did not strictly mimic our own. Talbot was
appearances rarely accorded with the images they
an apostle of the objective, and yet his language is shot
wished to project and remember, they had to be
through with the terms of the magical and the miracu-
arranged, often with symbolic props, such as books on
lous. Almost from the beginning, photography jostled its
pedestals. For some photographers, the living subjects
limits, both visual and metaphysical, and artists through-
were simply pretexts for sexual, allegorical, and histor-
out the medium’s history would seek more mousetrap
ical scenes. So Otto Rejlander and Lewis Carroll cos-
visions, to deliver evidence of what could not be seen.
tumed and arrayed their sitters as odalisques, Chinese
Evidence, indeed, for the camera’s very impersonality
exotics, knights and ladies. And if the presence of
would provide a guarantee that whatever was coaxed
such figures could be confirmed by the camera, why
into visibility was real, or at least credible.
not the truly unavailable? F. Holland Day’s photo-
Jump ahead 160 years, and that dubious guarantee
graphic sequence captured Jesus Christ speaking his
is in Simen Johan’s back pocket as he travels a coun-
seven last words. Some lucky photographers even
try road in the Southwest, notices an abandoned
managed to capture ghosts - by having an assistant
house, senses something about it, takes out his cam-
briefly enter a scene during a long exposure, leaving
era and begins hunting and gathering. Once he has
the trace of a human form. And anthropologists with
images on film, they will undergo a transforming pas-
cameras, Edward S. Curtis and Franz Boas, costumed
sage into art that will render them all but unrecogniz-
and arranged their native subjects to conform to pre-
able. Johan will feed them into his computer, disas-
conceptions about their character and practices.
semble them, merge them with other visual elements
So seeing was never exactly believing, but the so-
harvested from his travels, his cyberspace prospect-
called truth value of photography, its anchor in a pre-
ing, and his own studio shoots, and repopulate them,
existing reality, has faded like a cheap print since the
until the connection to their original occasion is sev-
1960s. It has been undermined by Pop Art’s attacks
ered and their suggestive essence is liberated in a new
on the photographic surface itself, staged imagery,
2 / Aperture no. 167
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and of course the pervasiveness of digital fabrication. Duane
around the corner, lurking in the front yard or upstairs in the play-
Michals, one of Simen Johan’s teachers, included angels in his
room - an ominous red playroom, for instance, in which a little girl
photo narratives. Gregory Crewdson, another of Johan’s teach-
sits staring furiously at the wall where she has chalked something
ers, has upped the ante for tableaux vivant to Hollywood propor-
incomprehensible, half drawing, half inscription. It might as well be
tions. These artists, and Johan especially, cannot find in the
REDRUM, and she could be a character from Stephen King’s The
given world the images that correspond to their apprehensions
Shining. On the evidence of Johan’s most recent New York exhibi-
of an inner one. Their solution is not to rely on available visual
tion, “Room to Play,” the games threaten to burst out of the play-
metaphors but rather to literalize intuitions that cannot be direct-
room and take over every room in the house. In this world, all the
ly apprehended. Appropriately, Johan titled his second solo exhi-
accouterments of childhood, dolls especially, assume on a sinis-
bition in New York “Evidence of Things Unseen.”
ter cast. Johan often wraps his dolls, turning them into little mum-
Why photography, then? Isn’t it like trying to drink a glass of
water with your hands tied behind your back? For these artists
Blocks and Mice, date etc etc.
cellar, a sort of doll holocaust.
the plausible surface is essential. It is the residual mark of con-
If any movement would own up to being the parent of such a
ventionalized consensus about the way things look. Johan does-
deviant offspring, it would be Surrealism. It is not just that
n’t want to deny or overturn that consensus but extend it to the
Johan, like the so many Surrealists, assembles his photographs
unseen and unseeable. Above all else, he seeks to reenchant
as montages, but rather, like Max Ernst and Hans Bellmer, he
the world, even if that enchantment comes at a price.
creates an alternative visual dimension, between highly mediat-
This conviction that the world is not enough, that there is more
ed representation and unconstrained fantasy. Here the most
to it than we usually see, has its origin in childhood. Johan’s
banal materials of the everyday world are reconvened under the
work is young, not just because he is still discovering which
auspices of the unconscious and reviewed according to its rules.
strains of imagery are most suggestive but also because he is
It’s easy to overlook the backdrops of Johan’s theatrical scenes,
close to the energies and agonies of childhood. Children are at
yet the tableaux spring directly from them - from the living room
the center of most of his images. Sometimes they are victims,
suffused with apocalyptic light, the graffiti-scrawled garage, the
oppressed by their institutional or domestic settings, by appar-
red room, and dozens of other settings. The scenes and char-
ent acts of physical violence, or by ordinary events gone bizarrely
acters may change, but they add up to an ominous, continuous,
wrong. Imagine being hit by an airborne birthday cake! But most
and inescapable realm. There’s the signpost up ahead; next
often, children don masks and costumes and go where adults
stop, the Twilight Zone.
cannot follow, into realms of fantasy, ritual practice, and super-
Few photographers have paid much attention to the fantastic
natural invocation. It’s one thing to dress up but quite another to
aspects of childhood. Ralph Eugene Meatyard and Diane Arbus
dress up as rats, the way Johan’s children do. These children
come to mind. But theirs are views from the outside. The actions
don’t fear their encounters with the absolute unknown; they
they depict follow a standard deviation from reality to metaphor.
meet it with a demented nonchalance, for its encroaching pres-
Beyond that, the camera cannot go. Putting on masks or playing
ence is the source of creative energy. In one image, a boy ped-
with dolls are signs of the imagination’s power to alter reality and
als his tricycle across a rail yard lit by street lamps, towing
the child’s place in it, but the very nature of the photograph and
behind him a skateboard on which sits a howling baboon,
its subordination to the order of things tells us this victory is tem-
stuffed and turbaned. It’s as if he’s transporting an effigy for a
porary. The masks come off, life goes on, the kids grow up and
psychopathic sect of Shriners. In another, a costumed little girl
learn to sublimate, and only memory is left to hover around
sits in a chair contemplating the mounted, decaying head of a
these signs of lost possibility. Even Arbus’s work cannot avoid
walrus or is it an elephant, from which delicate plants are sprout-
this pathos of the real. Johan is less sentimental and more rad-
ing. She waits for a mystery to be revealed.
ical. A dark Peter Pan, he insists literally on the power of fanta-
The mystery is death itself. Their rituals seem to arise from the
need to participate in its power, and sacred violence is always just
4 / Aperture no. 167
mies, and in one image, he heaps them up in a huge pile in a dark
sy to take over the world, and he gives us the photographic evidence to prove it can happen.
no. 167 Aperture / 5
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Blocks and Mice, date etc etc.
16 / Aperture no. 167
OriOn
Alien Intellect
It may come as a surprise to some that a creature so inherently foreign and frightening to us
could possess distinctly human traits. But as author Sy Montgomery writes in this issue of Orion,
these tentacled wonders, so often depicted as space aliens or horrors from the deep, have
distinct — even endearing — personalities. They’re also extremely clever, capable of engaging in
n O V e M b e r
play, escaping from captivity, and even solving complex puzzles designed by human engineers.
|
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b r a n D O n c Ol e
D e c e M b e r
p hO t O gr ap h
2011
nOVeMber
|
DeceMber
201
n at U r e / c U lt U r e / p l a c e
orionmagazine.org
b r i g h t g r e e n r e a l i t y c h e c k p. 12 a n D r e i c O D r e S c U p. 58
i n c O M e i n e Q U a l i t y p. 14 W a t e r W a r S O f t h e M i D D l e e a S t p. 50
Simen Johan
Frist Center for the Visual Arts
Until the Kingdom Comes
21C Museum
With their imposing size, articulated
textures, and lifelike poses, the animals
in Simen Johan’s photographs have an
uncanny quality of being literally present,
as if they are not just recorded by the
camera but are actual animals seen up
close through a pane of clear glass.
Cover: Untitled #152, 2008
Opposite page: Untitled #153, 2008
Fig. 1: Untitled #136, 2006
Fig. 2: Untitled #133, 2005
Fig. 3: Untitled #135, 2006
At the same time, their absolute stillness
and majestic presence, combined with
the sublime beauty of their natural surroundings, suggest that these may not
be images of quotidian reality at all, but
visions of Arcadia, dream sites in which
animals stay gloriously frozen, forever.
The kingdom of Johan’s title is not necessarily the animal kingdom or the future
paradise promised in the Lord’s Prayer.1
Instead, he uses the word to more broadly
invoke the deep-rooted human impulse
to imagine a perfect place or state of
mind—a kingdom just beyond reach—in
which desires would be fulfilled and life’s
dilemmas resolved. Johan’s images are
not necessarily of that place; they slip
back and forth between this suggestion
of a perfect kingdom and the portrayal
of a world with which we are all too
familiar. For every photograph of graceful
creatures and unblemished landscapes,
there are portrayals of animals showing
signs of pain, hunger, even exhaustion,
while their habitats may be more desolate
than Arcadian.
Johan’s images are completely without
people, perhaps because humans are too
obviously imperfect to imagine that they
could be a part of even an illusory paradise.
Yet the works clearly relate to human
processes, beliefs, and illusions. The
presentations are staged, with animals
posing expressively for the camera like
actors. Questions of authenticity versus
artificiality arise when one recognizes
that these are not all animals living in
their natural habitats. Some were photographed on location in zoos or wildlife
parks, farms, and museums; others show
roadkill or taxidermied specimens, posed
and Photoshopped into landscapes; still
others were taken in the wild. Which are
alive, and which are uncanny imitations
of life? Such ambiguity is symptomatic
of the universal dualisms that give life its
sense of being contingent, unfixed. Citing
such oppositions as “nature/artifice,
irony/sincerity, nightmare/ideal, animal/
human,” Johan says “things in real life are
never just one way or another. It’s a way
for me to get to some sort of truth about
the instability of meaning.”2
Johan’s works bring to mind what Alan
Bleakley terms the “animalizing imagination,” the consideration of animals as
vehicles for the absorption of the outer
world into the inner.3 This may appear as
a desire to know (and feel empathically)
the minds and bodies of the essential or
biological animal—the subject of Animal
Kingdom and National Geographic—
which incites our pleasure, fascination,
or terror by behaving in a way that will
always remain outside human experience
in a zoo, farm, or pet store, and obviously
are without the capacity to run or attack if
no matter how carefully we observe and
describe. It may also appear in the form
of the symbolic animal, which throughout history has been used to posit a
metaphorical relationship or similitude
between human and animal traits. We
see this in fables and cartoons, sayings
like “sly as a fox,” and the names of sports
teams, like the Chicago Bears. The animalizing imagination is also at the heart
of many shamanistic traditions, in which
supernatural creatures—totems or other
they are roadkill or museum specimens,
should the fiction be played out, the
assumption is that the photographer,
and by proxy the viewing audience, is
invisible to the animals. Their obliviousness reinforces the idea of a hierarchical
separation of the human from the animal,
framed as the privileged observer and the
unaware observed.
Johan’s creatures may fall into any one of
these categories, or all three at once. Yet
given the apparent objectivity with which
he represents his subjects, the biological
perspective seems most apt. If we accept
the illusion that these works depict living
animals in their usual habitats, we might
wonder at Johan’s ability to get close
enough to obtain images of this scale and
detail without being bitten or trampled.
While in reality we know the creatures
This is, of course, the implicit premise of
the dioramas of animals that are found
in natural history museums. Frozen
into poses meant to convey everyday
activities, these taxidermied specimens
represent the characteristics of their
species—deer convey deer-ness, bears
show how bears behave. This carries
over to the tradition of botanical and
zoological illustrations, which document
the distinctions between flora and fauna
in precise detail. While these were often
stiffly rendered on a blank background,
some naturalist-artists have striven for
a greater sense of scientific veracity by
showing the specimen as if it is in the
would be inured to humanity if they live
wild. John James Audubon (1785–1851),
animist spirits—are imagined to influence
humanity on the spiritual plane.
for example, sought to convey both
accurate anatomical and behavioral
information through his paintings and
prints, situating images of animals that
he had shot and mounted within renderings of their habitats. But Audubon would
often increase the animal’s scale, color
saturation, and clarity so it stood out from
its surroundings, leading to the sense that
these are not single views, but the layering
of two distinct views. Dead animals are
uncannily transformed into living actors,
with the background serving as the
stage. This subtle quality of dislocation
and life-in-death can be seen in Johan’s
works as well, particularly those in which
he combines images using Photoshop.
While the transposition appears seamless,
we remain unsure whether we are
seeing reality, or a conjunction of
possible realities.
While naturalists like Audubon resist
projecting human traits onto the animal,
Johan understands that viewers will
seek some touchstone in his images; the
assumption of symbolic linkage seems
hard-wired into the human-animal dyad.
We will likely think of his foxes as hus-
band and wife (fig. 1). When we look
closely and see the blood-stained muzzle
on the left and the tear-soaked face on
the right, we might project that either Mr.
or Mrs. Fox is feeling guilty for the pair’s
inescapably carnivorous nature. Likewise,
the clashing moose may be nature’s
equivalent of two testosterone-inflated
men fighting over a woman or bit of
territory (fig. 2). Three large bears rooting
through a compost heap or garbage pile
could symbolize humanity’s wastefulness,
or the adaptability (or in anthropocentric
terms, the corruptibility) of animals when
people make foraging too easy for their
own good (cover). These works do not
all project human meanings onto animal
behavior. Some simply acknowledge
common ground. Johan says “I like to
think about life and living on an elementary
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
level, where animals, humans, and even
plants are pretty much the same. In the
end it all comes down to feeding and
procreation without knowing why.”
With their monumental presence and
sense of eternal stillness (and stiffness),
the animals in Johan’s photographs have
the quality of memorial statuary. Johan
makes actual sculptures, as well, using
taxidermied animals such as deer and
chickens. Manipulating the fur or feathers
The novelist Saul Bellow has written that
“where there is no paradox there is no
of these creatures, Johan leavens our
inescapable awareness of their deadness
through fantastic constructions that are
at once playful and disturbing. In Untitled
#135 (fig. 3), a deer’s head with long hair
reminds us of a cross between Bambi’s
father (the Great Prince of the Forest) and
the fairy tale heroine Rapunzel, making a
trophy of this handsome transsexual who
has been slain and proudly mounted on a
wood-paneled wall. In his chicken sculptures, splendid tangles of feathers from
life.”4 If this is so, and if the kingdom of
absolute surety did arrive to sweep away
all mysteries, problems, and contradictions,
it follows that life would then end. And
this is Johan’s paradox: “If we had the
truth, there would be no room for fantasy
or deception. Until the kingdom comes,
there’s lots of fantasy and deception and
life depends on it.” In this formulation,
the resolution of doubt and contradiction
would be a grievous gain indeed. Johan’s
enigmatic scenarios would be monuments
to a single lost species.
many types of birds contain references
to various life cycles. In one, caterpillars
make cocoons wrapped in feathers,
which seem to metamorphose into
butterflies whose patterns mimic those
of the feathers: an adaptation toward
camouflage. These mini-ecosystems
contain echoes of human society. Johan
says, “in nature, there’s a lot of deception
and wanting to be fabulous going on,
belonging or not belonging, world making,
nest making, parasitical situations, etc.”
Mark Scala
Chief Curator
Notes
1. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth
as it is in Heaven.”
2. All Simen Johan quotations are from an e-mail to the
author, September 14, 2010.
3. Alan Bleakley, The Animalizing Imagination: Totemism,
Textuality, and Ecocriticism (NY: Saint Martin’s Press,
2000), pp. 40–41.
4. Here, Bellow is actually quoting his friend David Shahar,
who is explaining the contradictions between the utopian
idealism and blunt pragmatism accompanying the founding
and protection of modern day Israel. See Saul Bellow,
To Jerusalem and Back (New York: Viking Press, 1976),
p. 15. But the sentiment expressed may be more
broadly applied.
Checklist of the Nashville exhibition
Dimensions are given in inches;
height precedes width precedes depth.
8. Untitled #153, 2008
Digital c-print, 74 x 106 1/2 in.
Courtesy of 21C Museum, Louisville
All works are by Simen Johan.
1. Untitled #130, 2005
Digital c-print, 63 x 63 in.
Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery
2. Untitled #132, 2005
Digital c-print, 63 x 63 in.
Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery
3. Untitled #133, 2005
Digital c-print, 74 x 95 1/2 in.
Collection of Sam Trower
4. Untitled #135, 2006
Taxidermied deer, Kanekalon fiber, and
wallpaper, 120 x 120 x 30 in.
Courtesy of 21C Museum, Louisville
5. Untitled #136, 2006
Digital c-print, 63 x 63 in.
Courtesy of 21C Museum, Louisville
6. Untitled #140, 2007
Digital c-print, 63 x 73 1/2 in.
Collection of Allen Adler and Frances
Beatty Adler
7. Untitled #152, 2008
Digital c-print, 65 x 99 in.
Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery
9. Untitled #155B, 2010
Digital c-print, 36 x 43 in.
Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery
10. Untitled #156, 2009
Digital c-print 49 x 64 in.
Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery
11. Untitled #158, 2009
Feathers, cocoons, sparrows, insects, foliage,
taxidermy, cement, rock, and wood,
36 x 36 x 36 in.
Courtesy of 21C Museum, Louisville
12. Untitled #161, 2010
Tree log, feathers, cocoons, mushroom, eggs,
sparrows, finches, insects, and foliage,
51 3/4 x 46 1/2 x 46 1/2 in.
Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery
This exhibition is organized by the Frist Center
for the Visual Arts in collaboration with 21C
Museum, Louisville, Kentucky.
© 2011 Frist Center for the Visual Arts.
This exhibition was first presented at 21C
Museum, Louisville, Kentucky. Our thanks go to
lenders Laura Lee and Steve Wilson, with a special
appreciation to curator William Morrow. We also
thank the artist, and Yossi Milo Gallery in New York
for facilitating the exhibition at both venues.
Fig. 3
Simen Johan
Until the Kingdom Comes
21C Museum, Louisville, Kentucky
July 2–October 4, 2010
Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery
Frist Center for the Visual Arts
February 20–May 29, 2011
Gordon Contemporary Artists Project
Gallery Exhibition Sponsor:
Welling LaGrone and Morgan Keegan
919 Broadway
Nashville, Tennessee 37203
www.fristcenter.org
The Frist Center for the Visual Arts is supported in part by:
http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2009/09/review_simon_johans_until_the_kingdom_comes_at_yossi_milo/
Till The Kingdom Comes
Simen Johan has returned to Yossi Milo Gallery with an update of his ongoing series Until the Kingdom
Comes. The new pictures are just as disquieting as those in the 2006 exhibition – if not more so – and they
demonstrate a clear refinement of both technique and concept.
Johan has earned his name as a master of Photoshop technique by placing images of children, animals (both
living and stuffed) and detritus into landscapes that are themselves hybrid images. The effect is never obvious,
but the eye remains uneasy, subconsciously aware that the light coming out of the mist is a bit too vivid, that
the mountain’s shadow is too thin. His work always features a startling, sometimes macabre, central image, but
it is the slight unreality of place that truly unsettles.
In the current work, he seems to have embraced the mystical and religious weight that his title implies. Imagery
that was only vaguely iconic in the first installation has now become explicit. We have the Lamb of God, the
Tree of Knowledge, a roiling bush of serpents. From Johan these receive a welcome touch of depth and wit: the
lamb cocks its head with a wry, slight grin, having been sacrificed a thousand times before; the tree is
enshrouded almost totally in a low-lying cloud, its interior dark, dank, and probably fruitless. It is a pleasure to
see such measured thought and technique take the place of plastic Jesus irony.
What may be the most popular piece in the show features a nest of pythons that intertwine to form a sort of
reptilian arch. The arch is completed by two particular snakes that pass a moribund dove between their mouths.
The scene is set at the bottom of a particularly vibrant (and unreal) quarry, wherein the snakes relish a
seemingly endless feast of rats, doves and flamingos that descend from the world above. Interpret it as you will
– the picture is happily too strange for any easy closure.
The show is wonderful, not only for the visceral pleasure of the pictures, but also for its air of seriousness. These
are dark, moody images that call to mind large-scale painting rather than photographs. Like Caravaggio or
Bellini, he uses a calculated distortion of light and physics to stir in the viewer an uncanny sense of
disorientation, as if they were entering a new world that is unintelligible by accustomed means. If the magic
works, the viewer becomes meek, childlike. Traditionally this is to induce humility before the glory of God. But
Johan seems to think such a state – to be giddy with a child’s fears and genius – a gift in itself. He provides it
generously.
This entry was written by Asher Ross, posted on September 15, 2009 at 3:03 am, filed under Art and tagged Bellini, Caravaggio, Simen
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