Christopher Lowry Johnson Review in TimeOut New York

I don't mind saying that I so adore the work of Christopher Lowry Johnson that to see a review like the one in the current issue of TimeOut New York, a review by a critic who so totally gets what he's doing, makes me want to weep. [UPDATE: Ok, so perhaps not "weep"...I wrote that after a greulling day and a few cocktails, but still...it makes me happy to the point of tearing up.] I have known the writer Jane Harris for years and always admired her intellect and ability to see the essence of an artist's work, but my hat is off to her this evening for the gorgeously poetic read of Chris's current exhibition. So much so that I'll overlook the fact that they misspelled my name, twice, both times in a different way.

As Barry Hoggard notes on bloggy.com, you can't see these paintings in jpegs. In fact, they're so very slow it takes a good deal of time to really see them at all, but like no other paintings I've seen by a contemporary artist, these ones slowly, but surely, break my heart. Then again, what would you expect me to say. From TimeOut New York:

Dominated by tones of cool blue and icy white, Christopher Lowry Johnson’s paintings offer a somber update of the 19th-century Hudson River School. Half imagined and half real, Johnson’s subjects—isolated pine-tree groves, the craggy rock faces of Mount Rushmore, a riverbed of pebbles-cum-skulls—evoke the contemplative, allegorical paintings of Thomas Cole and his followers. But however romantic Johnson’s painterly style may appear, his scenes are anything but Edenic. The depopulated landscapes convey willful human abandon rather than untouched wilderness and are subtly entangled with contemporary issues of war and environmental disaster.

In the show’s most affecting work, Pines No. 5, Johnson portrays an awkward formation of evergreens, each decked out in Christmas tree lights, boughs heavy with dollops of snow. Softly advancing on the scruffy white ground under a gray-blue haze of twilight, these sad yet beautiful trees suggest an army of soldiers, bravely (or perhaps unwittingly) awaiting their demise.

The tension between order and chaos is a major theme in Johnson’s work, as evidenced by Chorus, a painting that transforms the iconic monument of Mount Rushmore into a meaningless ruin. The image reads like an emblem of fallen power: Faces fade and crumble in a valley surrounded by snow-capped mountains rendered in a gorgeous, Cezanne-like geometry of fractured planes.

While Johnson’s paintings are clearly a commentary on the state (and fate) of our current government, their criticism is distant. There is no indictment here, just a chorus of despair. — Jane Harris

Chris's exhibition runs through this Saturday, April 21, 2007.

UPDATE II: OK, so the accolades are rolling in now, it seems. This incrediblly thoughtful review by James Wagner was just posted as well. Here's a snippet:

I recently walked into the space at the end of a long afternoon of gallery visits and sat down on the bench in the middle [yes, a bench in a gallery - a bench, how extraordinary, and how helpful for both visitor and art!]. I stared at the large, very white-ish, canvas across from me, expecting to work with it only as a beautiful, complex abstraction. I had been immediately attracted to its drama and beauty as I walked in, before I knew anything or saw very much, but then something happened. As I sat looking at this canvas its impenetrable layers of oil opened a wonderful, very grand window on images both abstract and concrete, a world undetectable at first or even second glance.