HYPER NORMAL

[If you are interested in purchasing a work, please contact the gallery for more information.]

UPPER MARKET GALLERY is pleased to present HYPER NORMAL, a new selection of paintings by Olin Marcus Johanssen.

Opening Reception: May 29, 5-9pm

Poetry Reading: May 30, at 1pm — with Micah Ballard

Open Gallery Hours: May 31 & June 6, 12-5pm

Castro Art Walk: June 5, 5-9pm (Upper Market Gallery is location #14)

Film Screening: June 7, at 3pm — featuring scenes from Jean-Pierre Diemer & Felix Milionis

“When I was young, I remember being taught about the American Promise, that our system of government and society was superior to all others, a more perfect union, the envy of the world. While there has been no glaringly apparent fracture in its structure, it is inescapable to many that we no longer live under that promise as we were once taught. To many, it feels as if we are approaching collapse. Hope feels hopeless. Demise feels certain. All the while, we are being told simultaneously that tomorrow will be better and that tomorrow may hold nothing at all. So, we are left with nothing but uncertainty about what comes next. The weaving of narratives in this post-information age is beyond a mirage, so asymmetrical that it seems impossible to believe it could be intentional. Nothing feels in control except for the sense that we are ascending into a state of total control. I am attempting to understand the circumstances we are living under, and perhaps have been for some time.

I want the observer to be taken on a journey from “normal” to “not,” and to arrive at another “normal.” Through the deconstruction of an image, one that I am defining as normal, its brokenness becomes the “new” normal. The clear deviation from the intended goal is a promise left unfulfilled for the viewer. There is no guarantee that this work will last in its current form, in fact, it most likely will not. As the images are deconstructed, woven, and shaped to present as pleasing, they remain precarious. In that precariousness, do they really satisfy? It is through this process of deconstruction and reconstruction that the viewer may feel both comfort and unease at the same time.

Hyper Normal is a homage to three different sources of inspiration. The concept has been greatly influenced by the book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation by Alexei Yurchak, and the documentary HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis, hence the title of the exhibition and its advertised painting. The paintings are directly influenced by the work of my grandmother, Ruth Johanssen, a master weaver whose work I watched with wonder and live with to this day. I have always wanted to weave paint, as to me it is sculptural even in its flattest applications. Textiles, paintings, books, and films share the qualities of being layered, iterative, and intended to be lived with.” 

- Olin Marcus Johanssen

To view the show by appointment outside these hours, please contact the artist: olin@olinmarcusjohanssen.com