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June Issue 2005
Nina Liu and Friends in Charleston, SC, Features Works by Michael Johnson
Nina Liu and Friends celebrates Charleston,
SC's exciting festival season with an exhibition of black and
white photographs by Michael Johnson. Recent Landscapes
will be on view at the gallery through June 30, 2005. Gallery
owner Liu says that this group of Johnson's photographs evokes
the timeless qualities of the landscape of the American heartland.
Johnson has been creating silver gelatin photographs of rural
American landscapes for more than thirty years, and he has exhibited
his work at galleries and museums across the country. Among
the institutions that have collected his photographs are the Smithsonian
Institution's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington,
DC; the Illinois State Museum in Springfield, IL; the Art Institute
of Chicago; and the Gibbes Museum of Art in Charleston. Johnson
also has exhibited his work at Photo Gallery International in
Tokyo, Japan, and his photographs are in the collections of Sprint,
McDonald's, Bank of America, and many other corporations.
An article in the Los Angeles Times referred to Johnson
as "one of the country's premier landscape photographers." Critics
have said that Johnson's photographs "speak with an eloquence
of vision and craft from bygone days" and that they "speak
for themselves in their strength of purpose, elegance of form
and composition, and in their ability to simplify things without
being ordinary."
The photographs in Recent Landscapes
entice the eye with subtle gradations of tone that range from
white through seemingly infinite shades of grey to black. Johnson
skillfully balances the grandeur of clouded skies with earthbound,
patterned fields in such a way that each image is able to stand
alone or to work with its fellows to even greater visual impact. Though
the medium and subject of the two artists are not consistent,
one particular image in the exhibition, Window and Cloud,
calls to mind the work of Belgian painter René Magritte
because of the way in which Johnson has composed the photograph.
For more info check our SC Commercial Gallery listings or call
843/722-2724.
Carolina Arts is published monthly by Shoestring Publishing Company, a subsidiary of PSMG, Inc. Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc., which published Charleston Arts from July 1987 - Dec. 1994 and South Carolina Arts from Jan. 1995 - Dec. 1996. It also publishes Carolina Arts Online, Copyright© 2004 by PSMG, Inc. All rights reserved by PSMG, Inc. or by the authors of articles. Reproduction or use without written permission is strictly prohibited. Carolina Arts is available throughout North & South Carolina.