BE THEREAlice ReduxPresented by Winkleman Gallery February 29, 2008- April 26, 2008Reception: April 4, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pmSue JohnsonSchroeder Romero / Winkleman Gallery Project Space is pleased to present Sue Johnson’s Alice Redux. This work pictures an updated view of wonderland as if seen through a time warp. The 20-foot long panorama imagines the girl grown up, who must now navigate a super-saturated dream world replete with the flotsam and jetsam of 20th century consumer culture. (photo: Mark Gulezian) Allusions to the adventures penned by Lewis Carroll abound in this contemporary fantasia which is comprised by recognizable images from advertising and the everyday; a miniature zebra runs across a sleeper sofa and a clock radio keeps time at the foot of a termite-riddled tree from whose branch a close relative of the Cheshire Cat perches while Alice herself menaces the disembodied head of a rabbit-duck with a portable vacuum cleaner. In a cross-section rendering of the famous rabbit hole, an assortment of domestic scenes are poetically paired with advertising slogans floating in thought bubbles. The rabbit habitat itself is dug into what appears to be a logotype rich landfill of empty product containers and wrappers. In one particular sedimentary layer the Cheez-Whiz logo is just barely recognizable as it flattens out like molten lava traveling underground passages. Blending Surrealism’s embrace of chance juxtapositions with a decidedly Pop twist, Johnson creates her original digital collage from images cut from magazines, cookbooks, supermarket circulars and old encyclopedias or scans of such things as rock samples, a dishtowel or ceramic mushroom-thermometer. The collage is subsequently printed out on watercolor paper onto which the artist continues to build the image by hand-painting passages in acrylic paint. Born in San Francisco in 1957, Sue Johnson received her B.F.A. in studio art from Syracuse University and her M.F.A. in painting from Columbia University. She has had one-person exhibitions at the University of Richmond Museums, Richmond, Virginia; Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York; Midwest Museum of American Art, Elkhart, Indiana; Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania; and a traveling exhibition organized by the Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota Duluth. Johnson has received numerous grants, fellowships, and residencies including the Arts/Industry Program, John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin; City of Salzburg/Salzburg Künstlerhaus Residency Fellowship, Salzburg, Austria; Mac Dowell Colony Fellowship; the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Fellowship; the National Endowment for the Arts/Mid Atlantic Foundation Fellowship; and three Individual Artist Fellowships from the Maryland State Arts Council.
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