Larry Johnson’s LA rewrite of pop art

Date
16 July 2015

The split between the aesthetic and intellectual levels of Larry Johnson’s work is a dichotomy the California-born artist welcomes. But unlike much art that makes a spectacle of words, Johnson is in the business of subversion rather than critique, and manages not to fall prey to more well-trodden ideas that art and criticism are mirrors of each other. In an interview some years ago he argued the reason abstract painting exists is because people inherently like to look at nothing, and for an artist whose work so often conflates word and image, he is happy to enter the vacant realm of decoration.

Johnson’s particular mix of popular culture and queer vernacular artfully combines found imagery and fragments of text rooted in the city’s industry. Amid snippets of tabloid fluff, pastel colour plates and camp imagery invested with a star-like aura, he slips beneath Hollywood’s veneer and into its demi-monde, exploring celebrity and doomed stardom. “Marilyn Dead”, one work screams.

Since surfacing from The California Institute of Arts in the 1980s, Johnson has been quietly flexing his influence in Los Angeles art circles. Similar to Ed Ruscha and John Baldessari, his work is a thoroughly West Coast rewrite of pop art, and the deceptive simplicity of his low-slung style falls back on appropriation and repetition, relying more on the reproducible mediums of animation, graphic design and illustration than the artist’s hand. He has, as a result, fended off questions about the shadow Warhol might cast over his work with statements like: “I like him. I’m glad I’m old enough to realise he really is dead.”

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Larry Johnson: Untitled (Moved to Tears), 2010. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

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Larry Johnson: Untitled (Some Details with Dandruff Circled), 1995. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

On Location at London’s Raven Row is the artist’s first European survey. 20 years of work – some of it made in the last few months – have been installed in Raven Row’s 18th century domestic rooms in Spitalfields, inadvertently making the show a study in contrasts. A quainter take on the white cube, stateside artworks share the Regency-fronted space with whitewashed fireplaces and hardwood floors, and the striped wallpaper Johnson has created for parts of the show only adds to the peculiar juxtaposition the exhibition pivots on.

In light of the press release’s ruling that “the show’s uncontested star is Los Angeles”, it is only fitting that the exhibition should open with a piece depicting an Emmy perched on a windowsill and seen from the outside. This kind of distance speaks volumes of the cool remove that defines Johnson’s style and embodies the way dreams brush up against pedestrian reality in his brand of image-making.

Similarly, a muted diptych of Perino’s restaurant – an LA landmark that drew the likes of Bette Davis and Cole Porter before it was torn down in 2005 – shows the restaurant from the dual perspectives of the front and back, the latter entrance of which was for workers. Close to where Johnson remembers having sex in an alleyway, it is also a subtle reference to the city’s gay underground and a reminder of the camp character and the personal details often unseen, but ever present in his work.

It is a rare thrill to encounter work that is as layered as it is deliberately superficial, and the beguiling cocktail of references that make up Johnson’s On Location make for a show that is both subtle and highly charged.

Larry Johnson: On Location is on at Raven Row until 9 August.

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Larry Johnson: On Location installation shot. Photo by Marcus J. Leith

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Larry Johnson: Untitled (Leo Ford), 1999-2000. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

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Larry Johnson: Untitled (HMR), 1998. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

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Larry Johnson: On Location installation shot. Photo by Marcus J. Leith

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Larry Johnson: Untitled (Perino’s Front, Perino’s Rear), 1998. Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

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Larry Johnson: Untitled (Cinema Moralia), 2010 (detail). Courtesy of David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

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Alexander Hawkins

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