Curated Corners

This spring, Johansson Projects presents a curated selection of works by artists Sheena Rose, Nimah Gobir, Lisa Rock, Andrew Catanese, Nicole Irene Anderson, Annie Duncan, Miguel Arzabe, Iván Carmona, and Susie Taylor. These artists all explore complex emotions while illustrating human and spatial connections.

Sheena Rose
In a painting style characterized by flat coloring, bold patterns from the seventies and eighties, and vivid, comic-book-like palettes and vignettes, Sheena Rose’s proud figures take up literal and figurative space, donning clothes, hair and confidence that command attention. Rose paints vignettes symbolic of her imagination and often inspired by memory, unlocking a sense of freedom and power. 

Nimah Gobir
Gobir’s multi-media works trace the tapestry of her family tree while exploring the nuances of Black identity. Through personal family photographs and autobiographical histories her work hits on tender moments that are essential to humanity. Along with photo transfer techniques, she also incorporates embroidery and fabric into her pieces, symbolically representing weaving together the past and present. Paintings such as “Look Success” illustrate instantly recognizable family scenes, inviting the viewer into her childhood memories to create connections of our own.

Lisa Rock
Flattening space to merge many layers into a single plane, Rock’s paintings are distilled from photographs of her surroundings in the Bay Area. She is interested in the connection between natural and human-made forms, and her work explores the way we live between both worlds. Her paintings are bold formal studies of color, line, and composition– purposefully subverting photorealism.

Andrew Catanese
Catanese’s lush paintings call to important places in their life from the kudzu-laden landscapes of their upbringing in Virginia to the fecund environment of Northern California. Interested in how contemporary ideas of gender, race, and sexuality are deeply rooted in the death of the commons and privatization of land, Catanese’s paintings transform discarded landscapes into green spaces where plants and animals flourish. Catanese’s swirling compositions articulate their complex relationship to place and bring nuance to constructions of the self.

Nicole Irene Anderson
Anderson’s work examines the culture and motivations that brought settlers in California to this moment through landscape painting. Her paintings depict a version of California as a land burdened by a violent and emotionally loaded history. Anderson visits overlooked places that become visual metaphors for more significant societal and environmental concerns, making a case for empathy and care that should be practiced for the land that holds us.

Annie Duncan
Duncan uses ceramics to explore the nuances of femininity, vulnerability, and the body. She  recreates representations of everyday objects generally associated with femininity, bringing attention to the relationship between endless consumerism and social pressure toward self-optimization. Referring to classic stories like Alice in Wonderland, Duncan’s experiments with scale confront the viewer with tongue-in-cheek potions and promises that plague expressions of femininity in the contemporary moment. 

Miguel Arzabe
Arzabe makes colorful and dynamic abstractions – weavings, paintings, videos. He often starts by painting renditions of modernist paintings. They are methodically analyzed, deconstructed, and reverse-engineered. Drawing inspiration from the cultural techniques and motifs of his Andean heritage, Arzabe weaves the fragments together revealing uncanny intersections between form and content, the nostalgic and the hard-edged, failure and recuperation.

Iván Carmona
Carmona constructs organic, sculptural forms as an homage to the objects and natural features of his native Puerto Rico. In contrast to the idea of losing something in translation, Carmona recalls what he’s gained through the influence of his earliest connections to modern art.  Mixing modernist influences  with his medium of clay, Iván engages in dialogue with history, presenting new perspectives on forms that benefit from his love of the Caribbean. 

Susie Taylor
Taylor’s work explores geometric abstraction through the tradition of weaving. Imagery, rendered by the interlacing of warp and weft, is embedded in the very structure of the cloth. The interplay of yarns produces discernible color tones and textures that support a deeper exploration of translucency, opacity, saturation and dimension. Her compositions include basic shapes like blocks and stripes to address pattern, symmetry and color interaction, and the notion that ordered systems can still flirt with chance, interruption, and improvisation.

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

Sheena Rose (b. 1985, Bridgetown, Barbados) has exhibited in the United States at The Hole (New York, NY); Museum of African Diaspora (San Francisco, CA); Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC); De Buck Gallery (New York); Connect Gallery (Chicago, IL), Johansson Projects (Oakland, CA), the Museum of African Diaspora (SF) and has upcoming group exhibitions at the Lowe Museum in Florida (2024) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2024-2025). Internationally she has exhibited at the Havana Biennial (Cuba); ICF, Royal Academy of Arts (London, England); Berlin Biennale (Berlin, Germany); the University of the West Indies (Barbados); Saatchi Gallery (London) curated by June Sarpong; and 1-54 (London), curated by Caryl Ivrisse Crochemar. Her work has been acquired by collectors Venus Williams, Seith Mann, and the Barbados National Art Gallery, she’s been featured in publications including The New York Times, Travel & Leisure Magazine, Vogue, Hospitality Design, White Wall, Wetranfer, Black Futures, Fox Television Empire Season 6, and on the cover of the novel “The Star Side of Bird Hill” written by Naomi Jackson. Public works include a two-story mural at the Inter-American Development Bank Headquarters (Washington DC) and a mural for the exhibition “The Other Side of Now” at the Perez Art Museum (Miami). She was also commissioned by the DSM Public Art Foundation to design seven bus shelters in the 6th Avenue Corridor (Iowa). Rose won the Greensboro School of Art Distinguished Alumni award and in 2014, she received the distinguished Fulbright Scholarship. She holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and currently lives and works in her hometown of Bridgetown, Barbados.

Nimah Gobir (b. 1993 in Los Angeles, CA) is an artist and educator based in Oakland, California. She earned her B.F.A. in Studio Art and B.A. in Peace Studies from Chapman University before pursuing an M.Ed. at Harvard Graduate School of Education, specializing in Arts in Education. Through paintings and installations, her work explores the nuanced tapestry of Black identity. Drawing inspiration from familial and personal archives, she creates figurative works that capture the ways loved ones are reflected in one another and illustrate how their everyday habits shape their living spaces. Her artistic process extends beyond conventional mediums to embrace expressive brushwork, hand-stitched embroidery, and a fusion of household textiles. Her creative endeavors have been highlighted in Hyperallergic, 48Hills, and SF/Arts. In 2020, she completed a fellowship with Emerging Artist Professionals SF-Bay Area. Gobir has shown work at Root Division, Johansson Projects, SOMArts, and the Museum of the African Diaspora, where she was selected to be part of their Emerging  Artist Program. Additionally, Gobir was recently selected to be part of Recology’s 2024 artist in residence cohort. With upcoming projects poised to further amplify her artistic voice, she continues to weave together threads of memory, identity, and resilience in her work. She is in the permanent collection at The Crocker Museum.

Lisa Rock (b. 1985 in Marlborough, Massachusetts) is a painter living in Oakland. She received her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. Recent solo exhibitions include Merge Visible at NIAD Art Center in Richmond, CA and a solo exhibition at the Monterey Museum of Art’s Currents Gallery. Rock was an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and will be joining the Black Rock Desert NCA Artist in Residenc program Summer of 2022. She paints out of her studio in Alameda, Ca.

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. 

Nicole Irene Anderson (b. 1993, Cambria, CA, United States) earned a B.F.A. in Painting/Drawing from California College of the Arts in San Francisco and is a current M.F.A. candidate at the University of California, Davis. The artist has been featured in solo exhibitions at Johansson Projects (Oakland, CA) and the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (San Luis Obispo, CA) and has been included in group exhibitions at the di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art (Napa, CA), the Museum of Sonoma County (Santa Rosa, CA), and the David Brower Center (Berkeley, CA). Her work has also been featured in fair booths in FOG FOCUS at the FOG Design+Art fair (San Francisco, CA) and Untitled Miami Beach with Johansson Projects. Anderson has received grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and the Discovered: Emerging Visual Artist Grant from Creative Sonoma and is a recipient of the Mary Lou Osborn Award from the University of California, Davis. Her work has been documented in catalogs and featured in New American Paintings. Anderson is represented by Johansson Projects in Oakland, California. She currently lives in Santa Rosa and works in Davis, California.

Annie Duncan (b. 1997, San Francisco, California) makes paintings and ceramic sculptures that explore femininity, symbolism, and art historical references. Leaning into her affinity for collecting, sorting, and obsessing over objects, her work finds humor, heartbreak, joy, and meaning in the jumbled world we inhabit. She received a BA from Vassar College in 2019 and an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2023. Annie was a featured artist with Plunge Towels. She has shown her work at Saint Joseph’s Art Society (San Francisco), Good Mother Gallery (Los Angeles) and Johansson Projects (Oakland), among others. 

Miguel Arzabe holds a BS from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS from Arizona State University, and an MFA from UC Berkeley. His work has been presented in museums and galleries, including MAC Lyon, France; MARS Milan, Italy; RM Projects Auckland, New Zealand; FIFI Projects Mexico City, Mexico; Marylhurst University, Oregon; Johansson Projects, Oakland, California; Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, California; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California;  Albuquerque Museum of Art, New Mexico; the Tucson Museum of Art; the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; the Jewish Contemporary Museum, San Francisco; Marin Museum of Contemporary Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the ICA SF; and the Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville. He has held many residencies, including Facebook AIR, Headlands Center for the Arts, Montalvo Arts Center, and Santa Fe Art Institute. He has been featured in such festivals as Hors Pistes at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Festival du Nouveau Cinéma Montréal, Canada; and the Geumgang Nature Art Biennale in Gongju, South Korea. In 2022, Miguel received the Artadia Award, and his work “Te Quiero Inti” was acquired into the permanent collection at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, California. In 2023, Miguel was a Pollock-Krasner award recipient and received a Golden Foundation Residency and a Google Artist in Residence. In 2024 Arzabe will be in a group show at The San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, featured in a Made in Paint exhibition at Golden Artist foundation in New Berlin, NY, has a Public Art Commission for the International Airport in Houston, TX, featured in the New York Percent for Art in Queens, NY, is selected as a finalist for SFMOMA’s SECA award, is featured at FOG Fair and EXPO Chicago/Frieze Fair with Johansson Projects, is selected for a group exhibition at ICA SF in “The Poetics of Dimensions” curated by Larry Ossei-Mensah, and will be featured at the deYoung Museum’s exhibition, Bay Area Artists from the Svane Gift.

Iván Carmona (b. 1973) is an American artist raised in Puerto Rico. He received his BFA from the Oregon College of Art and Craft. Recalling representations of Spanish colonial architecture, dense colorful vegetation as well as complex textures and patterns, Iván draws upon a strong visual vocabulary in his work. Through the use of tropical landscape and traditional cultural idiosyncrasy, one can see how deeply Iván identifies with the structure and beauty of his home. Employing imagery, form and texture, Iván’s exploration of the relationship between human emotions, culture, identity, and geographic connections enables him to capture the complexity, personality and history of his art. Carmona has received the Hallie Ford Foundation Fellowship from The Ford Family Foundation, the Student Scholarship Award for Outstanding Academic and Artistic Achievement, the Dean’s Scholarship, the Commitment to Craft Scholarship and the Huntley-Tidwell Scholarship. Selected collections include Boise Art Museum, Cedar Hall Seattle, Crocker Art Museum, Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation, King County Public Art Collection, Meta Open Arts, Museum of Glass, Museum of Contemporary Art in Puerto Rico, Portland Art Museum, Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, The Vanport Building, Port of Seattle and Regional Arts & Culture Council Portable Art Collection.

Susie Taylor weaves abstract and dimensional textiles. She has exhibited her work across the U.S. as well as in international fiber art and contemporary textile biennials in China and Ukraine. Her solo and group exhibitions include Origin Stories and Hardcore Threadlore at Johansson Projects (Oakland); Altered Perceptions at ICA San Jose; Poetic Geometry at Textile Center Minneapolis; Material Meaning: A Living Legacy of Anni Albers at Craft in America Center (Los Angeles); Fiber Art: 100 Years of Bauhaus at Art Ventures Gallery (Menlo Park, CA); and Weaving At Black Mountain College: Anni Albers, Trude Guermonprez, and Their Students” at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, curated by Michael Beggs and Julie Thomson. Taylor is the recipient of a Handweavers Guild of America, Certificate of Excellence in Handweaving Level 1 and received an HGA Award for Beautiful Struggle at the National Fiber Direction 2015 at the Wichita Center for the Arts. She was awarded an HGA Award and the Innovation Award at Focus: Fiber 2014 at the Erie Art Museum. Other notable exhibitions include: Materials Hard and Soft, Greater Denton Arts Center, Fiber Arts VII, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, Eastern Michigan University Gallery, and New Voices in Weaving, Contemporary Crafts Gallery (Portland). Her work was recently acquired into the de Young Museum’s permanent collection (San Francisco) and has been published in The LA Times, American Craft, Fiberarts, FiberArt Now, The Textile Eye, Complex Weavers Journal, Shuttle Spindle & Dyepot, Handwoven, Journal of Weavers Spinners & Dyers and The Bulletin (Guild of Canadian Weavers) magazines.