L.A. ARTCORE PRESENTS

A GALLERY RETROSPECTIVE BY STEPHEN ROBERT JOHNS  

OCT. 1- 30^TH, 2014

Reception – Sunday Oct 5^th

1 p.m. – 3 p.m. – Artcore Brewery Annex

Conversation With The Artist Series: 2 p.m.

L.A. Artcore Brewery Annex

LOS ANGELES, CA (Sept ., 2014) L.A. Artcore has the privilege of presenting a solo exhibit reviewing the career of artist Stephen Robert Johns. Retrospective – A Painting Survey 1972-2014, contains the evolution of an artist dedicated to the realms of shape and silhouette, edge and pattern. 

His career opens with completing his degree during the changeover between Chouinard and Cal Arts, where the influence of Watson Cross, Hal Jepsen and Matsumi Kanemitsu influenced his trajectory.  The young artist found himself filling large orders for his minimalist geometric paintings to satisfy a number of architects, which led to a period of being burned out on artmaking, and a new passion for serious, artistic landscape architecture.  The fluidity and negotiable nature of working the land with living materials provided him with a creative outlet where he could avoid thinking of styles and what sells. 

It was not long before the artist found himself refreshed by a new view of art.  After learning David Hockney and Frank Gehry were teaching classes to youth at Barnsdall Park, he obtained a position teaching disabled youth.  Together with experiences traveling across the states, to Japan and Costa Rica, provided the artist with a way to work in terms of what interests him in the now.  Once he felt he had more to offer, his work moved into a range of paintings that deal both with stark contrasts and edges, fields of abstract pattern inspired by Bauhaus or 20^th century modernists, and a range drawn directly from observation, many of them looking down from a great height. These merged with his work with plants and a love for Zen gardens to produce interlocked

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landscapes and river tributaries as abstract plays of sedate colors, like the verdant heat of yellow against green.  Hundreds of preliminary sketches from airplane window seats, using the airsick bags in front of him, formed the underlayer of this approach to merging geometry, color and nature.

Artist Reception:

Sunday Oct. 5^th, 2014, 1 p.m. – 3 p.m.

Conversation With the Artist Series at 2 p.m.

L.A. Artcore Brewery Annex

650A S. Ave. 21., Los Angeles, CA 90031

Gallery hours: 12-5 p.m., Thu-Sun.

ABOUT L.A. ARTCORE

L.A. Artcore helps develop the careers of visual artists of diverse cultural backgrounds, bringing innovative contemporary art to the public, and provides educational programs by professional artists for people of all ages. For more information visit www.laartcore.org

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