AISHONANZUKA is please to announce two persons show “Chum Chum Rubby Dubby” by Aaron Johnson and Christian Rex Van Minnen. It will be the first exhibition of the artists in Hong Kong Asia.
Aaron and Chtistian are long time admirers of each other’ s works, as well as friends. They took the opportunity for this exhibition to design a suite of paintings of same sizes to alternate positions throughout the gallery space, and also literally bridged together their practices in two collaborative sculptures.
In certain ways these two artists are polar opposites. Christian Rex Van Minnen’ s works honor the methods and materials of the great schools and masters of European oil painting. Aaron Johnson takes an irreverent stance toward tradition, going so far as to stick socks into the sacred space of painting. Despite those differences, both artists demonstrate an exquisite devotion to craft and process. Their approaches, most clearly demonstrated in the collaborative sculptures in which they built and painted on each other’ s structures, complement each other in uncanny ways.
In terms of imagery and psychological grit, Van Minnen and Johnson are a natural pair to share an exhibition. In the most simple terms, both could be said to embody in their paintings a “grotesque figuration” . Both are involved in ideas such as attraction vs repulsion. Digging deeper, both artists explore the human body, and the process of painting itself, as a physical terrain for psychological and spiritual aspects of the human condition to run its course. The image of the fish plays a vital role in many of the paintings and sculpture featured in this exhibit, an image Carl Jung illuminated as archetype representing the collective unconscious. Indeed, Johnson and van Minnen are two fisherman chums, chumming the waters of the subconscious abyss, wishing, waiting for a leviathan.
For this exhibition, Johnson focused on a series of portraits, characters who are assembled of modular parts. These relief elements: guns, burgers, tacos, etc, are all sculpted out of old socks. Johnson is interested in the absurdity and comedy of socks as art material, and in creating dynamically sculptural paintings. In addition to these sock paintings, Johnson’ s largest work in the show demonstrates his newest process: fluid acrylic stained into raw canvas. Van Minnen likewise focused on a series of portraits involving sculptural ideas, working from reference imagery of fragments of baroque Italian terracottas, Chinese scholar stones, and other references ‘glazed’ as if they were ceramics with references ranging from Jakuchu, porn, digital iPad drawing to pop culture food reference. By applying classical technique of grisaille followed by glazes of color, Van Minnen creates a dynamically illusionistic sense of relief in his luminous paintings. Into the flesh of his subjects, he applies tattoos that are in turn disturbing, humorous, and mysterious.
Both painters demonstrate zealously maximalist aesthetics as they fish the subconscious abyss. As they take deep dive into the chum bucket of sculptural collaboration, they dredge up some wildly weird and colorful results.
We will have a reception party with the artists on November 14th. Please meet the artists in person and enjoy this unique exhibition.
