Johansson Projects presents Thinking, Staring & Smoking, a solo exhibition with paintings and drawings by Los Angeles-based artist Robert Pokorny. After a year of working in relative isolation, Pokorny’s unconventional portraits depict allegories of confinement: Pent up energy, discord and balance, deep conflict and pure harmony. 

Pokorny’s studio practice is defined in part by an ongoing conversation with great painters of the past: Philip Guston, Pablo Picasso, and David Park, as well as living artist David Hockney, to name a few. Using his own form of stylized figuration, his portraits explore an amalgam of experiences over the pandemic period with humor and cynicism, culturally tinted by California’s counterculture movements and weird fiction.

A response…by Garrett M. Brown

“What a long strange trip it’s been…” might be the Grateful Dead refrain you hear as you view Robert Pokorny’s stunning collection of paintings (acrylic on linen), drawings (charcoal and crayons) and a portfolio of unframed drawings. Rather than sitting in a bar, The Grateful Dead would be jamming to us, along with Mr. Pokorny, his wife and their dog, in the confines of a pandemic locked-down brightly lit “night studio”. And, like all of us, coming from this turbulent pandemic-ravaged year, Jerry Garcia, too, would be “Thinking, Staring & Smoking” – the title of Pokorny’s new show at Oakland, California’s Johansson Projects. This is a brilliant homage to Philip Guston, Picasso, mixed in with the likes of The Hairy Who, The Chicago Imagists and R. Crumb with a little bit of David Park. Contemporary and very Pokorny, Thinking, Staring & Smoking – is a grand green-eyed and sausage nosed stare into the revelations and comforts of being stuck together, joint in hand, drink near, and hopefully – luckily for Mr. Pokorny – a beloved wife and dog to share the wearying into the nights. This is not a raging into that good night but rather a very enlightened (see the Guston reds, the Picasso eyes, the masks, the barricades, the curls of smoke, the wrung hands as they tilt perhaps towards Ben Shahn) and humorous (not glib or cartoonish but layered and identifiable) grappling with the terror, panic, and depression that a lot of us weathered these past eighteen months and survived. Now, please, join Lily, Mr. Pokorny’s sweet dachshund – I swear her hot dog shape inspired those noses (!) — and his green-eyed muse, wife Char, and Robert himself, harried, hairy and harbinger of grand things to come – as they rouse us to leave those conundrum doldrums of yore and come back into the light, yes, the very bright lights of that night studio.”

The exhibition runs from July 31 – September 18, 2021 with an opening reception on Saturday, July 31, 1-4PM

For more, information please contact Johansson Projects at 510-444-9140  or info@johanssonprojects.com

Robert Pokorny Press Links

I use portraiture as a device through which a dialogue is opened between the artist and viewer, the artist and the outside world. Portrait as an expression of myself, the practice of the studio, the intentional dialogue between my own vision and great painters from the past. Color and form are used to describe and initiate feelings. Each mark is packed with foresight and intention. Questions about humanity, diversity, discord and balance in society are communicated through my process of abstraction. Portraits that do not convey one person in particular but perhaps pictures of us all—the rich diversity of human dialogue, the moments of deep conflict, the pleasure of pure harmony.

With the world in upheaval and on lockdown I found myself, as many of us did, in deep self-reflection. This introspection led me to express the narrative in my work, however mundane, weary, and indulgent. I think many of us found ourselves thinking and staring into the night while fixated on the news. These portraits are a personal marker of this unprecedented time period, capturing moments that are seemingly absurd, sometimes humorous, but completely sincere.

Robert Pokorny is an American contemporary visual artist living and working in Long Beach, California. Pokorny’s work has been exhibited extensively nationally as well as internationally and is held in public and private collections worldwide, including Fidelity Art Collection and University Hospitals Art Collection. Pokorny has been featured in Art Maze Magazine, Amadeus Magazine, Arte Al’ Limite, Cool Hunting, Juxtapoz, Maps, Sound & Vision Podcast and Voyage LA. His recent solo exhibitions include ‘Modern Guilt & Blue Skies’ 2020 and ‘Dialogue’ 2019 at Ampersand Gallery. In 2019, his book ‘Drawings’ was published by Ampersand Editions and debuted at the LA Art Book Fair. Pokorny holds a BA and MFA from California State University Long Beach.