These Fields Dream of Fire

Andrew’s second solo show with Johansson Projects includes gouache on paper, oil on canvas, and a repeat, generous invitation into the symbolic world of flora and fauna that colors their life. 

This body of work specifically highlights the landscape of a chase that predates America. Andrew is grappling with a return to home and its attendant, yet unexpected re-enchantment. They provide us an intimate, almost voyeuristic entre to the interplay between hunter and hunted. Horses, hounds, foxes, and folk are all included in what presents as rich allegory, fable, and even fantasy of the American South. 

Andrew paints their creatures flatly but as lovingly as a Morandi vessel, where instead of the illusion of volume, their color palate fills us with its rich psychic depth. In one example, In This Place My Head Is Always Spinning, But Not In A Bad Way, the title alludes to the feelings invoked from a dance of the canines linked together like flames on a prairie. 

In other equine efforts like A Last Gasp of Winter and the Fog Will Rise, light is caught playing on their haunches while wisps of condensed water spring from the surrounding, loaded spaces. 

Most works are paying attention to the ancillary characters of the chase. The gaze of these horses and hounds meet yours as if contributing to a conversation they have not been typically invited to join. 

It may be because the humans seem consumed by their environment. Perhaps the typical tensions of our environmentally sobering news cycle have distracted them from engaging. They ponder vulnerably. Meanwhile, dogs are keen on a scent. Horses are freshly saddled, and the fox… well the fox’s thinking and the circumstances surrounding it may best be summed up by Andrew’s own statement about their work:

“In it, there is a magic; in the chase, we become a part of the ancient rites of nature we have sought so long to divide ourselves from. The terrible, violent beauty that exists everywhere, but which we rarely see. It permeates this land, guarding it against change. Guarded against good and bad. Not all cruelty is evil, but it doesn’t matter when you are the fox.”

In the end, does this ritual’s beauty spare it or do these fields succumb as in their dreams? 

These Fields Dream of Fire runs through August 31 with an Opening Reception on July 27 from 3-5 and August 2 for First Friday

For all inquiries, contact Johansson Projects at 510-444-9140 or info@johanssonprojects.com

“I thought I was over it. The fear I mean, and I mostly was. Except not completely, a few grassy fields, some split rail fences, and the whispering of the loblolly pines in the wind, and I was thrown back into how it once was. I dressed with fear and hid myself. And when I realized it, I was angry. Angry in a way that I had forgotten. Angry for myself and all that I was not allowed to be. In that enchanting place, there was so much grief. Everything was so beautiful; sometimes even the anger was beautiful. Or righteous, at least. I had to keep telling myself, it’s different this time. 

It feels like home. The lightning-flash of whitetail deer, pink magnolias in full bloom, and the promise of morels under the just-sprung canopy of the tulip poplar. “I love this place,” I will say a thousand times to no one. These fields are still here because of the fox hunts. The woods kept back with axes instead of fire, but kept back all the same. “This is where I’m from,” I say to everyone I meet. But me and this place, we are strange bedfellows. Imperfect in our love, but I love this place all the same. 

The hounds, they are truly beautiful. They hunt in pairs, lovers in a crowd of forty others. A concert of couples, each shaped by our hand for this pursuit. You can see it in them. Every part of them is ready for this. They only know this, and they don’t need anything else. It is a kind of perfection we have imagined for them. In it, there is a magic; in the chase, we become a part of the ancient rites of nature we have sought so long to divide ourselves from. The terrible, violent beauty that exists everywhere, but which we rarely see. It permeates this land, guarding it against change. Guarded against good and bad. Not all cruelty is evil, but it doesn’t matter when you are the fox.”

These Fields Dreams of Fire runs through August 31 with an Opening Reception July 27 from 3-5 and August 2 for First Friday

For all inquiries, contact Johansson Projects at 510-444-9140  or info@johanssonprojects.com 

Andrew Catanese’s work searches for new ways to understand ourselves and our relationship with the “natural” world. In their paintings, Catanese melds aspects of the human with animals, foliage, and other organic forms. The body becomes an ever-changing site of transformation, a bridge between realms. Catanese blurs the great divides defined by Bruno Latour; human and animal, nature and culture, organic and technological; in favor of understanding these things as deeply intertwined. By subverting dualism, Catanese’s work finds ways to talk about new constructions of the self. The work insists on a fluid and transformative understanding of our bodies; the work knows the human body to be a cyborg constructed from animal, plant, nature, and technology.

Andrew Catanese (b. 1993 Ann Arbor, MI) is a painter and sculptor from the American South. They earned a BFA in Studio Art at the Sam Fox School of Art at Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA a Stanford University.  Catanese has shown their work in galleries and museums throughout the United States, including Johansson Projects (Oakland, CA), Maune Contemporary (Atlanta, GA), Macon Arts Alliance (Macon, GA), Banana Factory Arts Center (Bethlehem, PA), SOMArts (San Francisco, CA), and Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art (Augusta, GA). Artist residencies include The Creatives Project, Artist in Studio Residency in Atlanta, GA, Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Upperville Virgina, among several public art projects for murals and public sculpture. In 2021, they were awarded the prestigious Cadogan Scholarship that supports master of fine arts students. Catanese currently lives and works in Palo Alto, CA. 

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Artist Talk with Tony Bravo: “A lot of the ways I relate to the natural word is through fluidity and movement which goes back to our conversation about queerness, and for that it I have a better understanding of myself in relation to everything else around me”  LINK

Interview: “Finding Inspiration on the Run” by David Gleisner for janji.com | June 2022
“Andrew’s work embodies his curiosity about the encounters that bring us closer to our natural origins. As an ultra mountain runner and Janji Field Team member, he indulges this curiosity with trail runs around his California home that connect him with members of his natural community, from snakes to black tail deer. We chatted with Andrew to learn more about his art, his running, and the myriad ways that they inform each other.” LINK