Ken Johnson Paintings
March 5 - April 9, 2022
installation images selected works thumbnails
Press Release
KEN JOHNSON
Paintings
March 5 - April 9, 2022
Kerry Schuss Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of paintings by Ken Johnson, the former New York Times art critic and author of the cult tome "Are You Experienced? How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art." Johnson, now 68, began painting full time in 2016 after retiring from the Times. The present exhibition focuses on a series of circular abstractions painted in gouache on paper during the first two years of the Covid Era. Geometrically intricate, colorful and luminous, like stained glass windows, the paintings playfully riff on the round, symmetrical form of the mandala, which has served since ancient times as an object of meditation and a symbol of wholeness. This is Johnson's first solo exhibition.
Ken Johnson (b. New Jersey, 1953) grew up in Maine and graduated from Brown University in 1976 with a B.A. in art. He earned a masters degree in studio art with a concentration in painting at the State University of New York at Albany in 1977. For the next five years he worked as a technician in the painting department of an art conservation laboratory operated by the New York State Department of Historic Sites in Waterford, NY. In 1983, he started writing art reviews for the Albany Times Union newspaper and for other local publications in the Albany, NY region where he lived from 1977 to 2001 (in Troy from the early 80s on). In 1987 he began writing articles on contemporary artists for the now defunct Arts Magazine, and a year later he moved on to Art in America for which he wrote reviews and articles regularly for the next nine years. In 1997 he began writing reviews for The New York Times, and continued to do so until Sept. 2006, when he took a job as the chief art critic for the Boston Globe. After a year in Boston, he returned to New York and to writing art criticism for the Times, continuing to do so until October 2016. In 2011, his book “Are You Experienced? How Psychedelic Consciousness Transformed Modern Art” was published by Prestel Books. In 2013, he began producing an online comic called “Ball and Cone” (ballandcone.tumblr.com). “Ball and Cone” was listed among “Notable Comics” in “The Best American Comics of 2016.”
He has lived in Flushing, Queens since 2001.