Albert Baronian is pleased to present Particulate Paper Poems, Chris Johanson’s fourth exhibition at the gallery. The show is comprised of a selection of works on paper created in 2018.

For over twenty-five years, Chris Johanson has been captivating audiences around the world with his thoughtful and vibrant reflections of everyday life and the human condition. A central figure of San Francisco's Mission School, Johanson's multidimensional practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and music.

His detailed depictions of ordinary people are a spirited defense of humanity against the crushing uniformity of modern existence, and in recent years he has increasingly employed abstraction in his continuing artistic quest for the sublime. Chris Johanson (b.1968, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) is an American artist whose idiosyncratic paintings, drawings and sculptural installations address the contemporary human condition with sincerity and wit, placing him in a long and distinguished lineage of artists who have attempted to portray not only objects, people and events, but also the ineffable fabric that binds them together.

Born in San José, California, Johanson moved north to San Francisco in 1989, where he took up painting and drawing in a burgeoning artistic community of street artists, including Barry McGee and Margaret Kilgallen, that later became known as the Mission School. Despite his lack of formal training, Johanson’s work stood out for its off-kilter humor and ‘heavy energy’, and since the late 1990s it has been increasingly featured in major institutional solo and group exhibitions across the Unites States and Europe. His paintings are documentary pictures: simultaneously an image of the world outside and a direct translation of his own heart and mind. Johanson’s artistic objective is, in his words, ‘beauty through honesty’.

Johanson’s work has been shown in numerous international exhibitions, including the Istanbul Biennal (2005), SITE Santa Fe (2002) and the Whitney Biennial (2002), and featured in solo exhibitions at such venues as the Mälmo Konsthall (2011), the Portland Art Museum (2007) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2003).