Kelley Johnson: Something That Hovers and Pulses Just Under the Surface

A visual rhythm fuels Kelley Johnson’s chromatic artwork into a luscious dialog about tension between spaces. Johnson energizes links between the formal ideas and physical nature of installation, painting, and sculpture. He starts with a simple logic — stripes, patterns, zigzags, color fields — things to get painting moving, to let them find an echo and beat. Symmetry, escapism, velocity, vibration, and free form geometry are layered and sequenced.

Many of Johnson’s works investigate how we see 2D flat planes in physical space while he creates them as an immersive 3D sculptural paintings. He uses these elements as tools for opening and closing pictorial areas by overlapping and combining forms to create optical spaces. Johnson builds an illusion of space, using ideas that react along with and go against his formal knowledge of the history of painting.

Johnson was born in 1973 and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and currently lives in Miami. He received his BFA at Parson School of Design and later his MFA at Indiana University. At a very young age, he began working with his developer stepfather. He worked with framing and finishing crews in the construction process, learning about the structural elements that went into making mid-western wood framed “stick built” homes. This influenced the way he uses space and structure in his artwork. Johnson has worked professionally in the field of painting, sculptural painting, and installation for more than 15 years. His works have been written about in online publications and featured in New American Paintings.