Marc Jancou Contemporary is pleased to announce the gallery's inaugural exhibition will feature new work by Los Angeles based artist Larry Johnson. This will be Johnson's first New York solo show in six years. Since the mid 1980s, Johnson has explored the visual side of pop culture through his signature works that are a hybrid of drawing and photography. Each work begins as a drawing, which Johnson then photographs and digitally manipulates before printing as a final photograph.
In this new body of work, Johnson revisits old motifs, such as the donkey seen in a former work, Land Without Bread, reinvigorating them by interrupting the narrative with a visual of his own hand. Toying with the notion of the "artist's hand," Johnson literally incorporates an image of his hand into the drawing, playfully manipulating his characters. This startling juxtaposition further complicates the medium of the work as it shifts from drawing to photographic form. The copy machine, projector, and meters featured in the work come to life as they emit cartoonish beams of light that comically suggest a divine force. The high contrast of dark and light add an ominous sense of mystique to the ordinary objects, furthering the work's humorous undertones.
Larry Johnson (b. 1959) lives and works in Los Angeles. Select solo exhibitions include Patrick Painter Inc., Santa Monica; Cohan, Leslie & Browne, New York; and Modern Art Inc., London, England. Group exhibitions include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Midway Contemporary Art, St. Paul, Minnesota; and UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA.