Art Murmur at Johansson Projects

Johansson Projects presents two simultaneous shows featuring the works of Rachel Kaye in SHEBAM! POP! BLOP! WIZZ! and Casey Watson in Opal Dust.

Rachel Kaye's textile playgrounds channel the eternally dramatic love affair between art and fashion. Ripped from fashion magazines today's top trends melt into mazes of color and pattern, pure visual stimulation devoid of opinion or moral stance. As if conducting an operation, Kaye deconstructs the visual fabric of her physical fabrics, letting the symbiosis of art and fashion exist on the same picture plane. Eventually any trace of the textiles' former life as a clothing object is forgotten as the patterns invite comparisons to graffiti, the internet, hieroglyphics and even technicolor cartography. The ghosts of high art masters like Yayoi Kusama and Andy Warhol loom above the trendy polka dots and floral motifs, yet instead of lamenting their grand visions' fall to consumer levels Kaye revels in the beautiful all-at-onceness of it all.

Opal Dust features Casey Watson depicting the sharp-edged task of portraying a soft exterior. Watson’s meticulous colored pencil and graphite drawings invite the viewer to unearth her treasures and inspect their rusted edges. Up close, petals, leaves and stems re-arrange themselves into kaleidoscopic wreaths. These newly forged orbs careen and breed, evoking ideas of natural symmetry and squished floral formations. From a distance, the same drawings take on new forms as fireworks, galaxies, and magnified molecules pop from the paper.

Shows runs November 29- January 12, 2013
First Friday: December 7, 5-8pm