HOMEBODY
SOPHIE TREPPENDAHL SOLO EXHIBITION
April 30 – June 18, 2022
Artist Reception: Friday, May 6, 5-8PM
Johansson Projects presents High Plains, a three-person exhibition featuring the work of Rachelle Bussières, Blaise Rosenthal and Andy Vogt. Ranging in mediums from exposures on gelatin silver photo paper, to reclaimed wood lath constructions, and layered painting and drawing on canvas, these three artists use unique vocabularies to compose reflections of individual experience. Their practices share in the use of time and transmutation, each performing acts of alchemy in the studio that shift their humble materials in the direction of the sublime. The exhibition opens January 8 and will run through February 26, 2022
Beyond materials and process, High Plains draws our attention to an open and varied landscape where an endless possibility of sight lines and visual experiences can be imagined. It also alludes to the idea of “planes of abstraction” where new and open-ended visual languages provide a way of examining the endless potentials of conscious reality.
Rachelle Bussières’ (b. 1986) practice is based on exploring the impact of light on our psyche, environment and social structures. The products of her process, known as lumen printmaking, include photograms that oscillate between two-dimensional images and three-dimensional objects. These are windows on interior spaces that grow and are depleted by sunlight, as well as artificial light sources such as flashes and light bulbs. She seeks to generate new ways of seeing, to challenge our beliefs and intuitions about perception, and draw attention to the ways in which light and shadow sculpt new optical space.
The first home Blaise Rosenthal (b. 1973) remembers was on the edge of nowhere. At the end of a dirt road in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada he spent his formative years. The elemental character of this environment and its aesthetic vocabulary became archetypal for him. Earth, water, fire, and wind; all in local forms. Seasons. Dusty bare feet and no shirt through dry heat Summers, and the sound of crickets at night. Stars beyond counting. The still death of autumn. Winter, with rain on the roof, the smell of cold smoke, and darkness. And then spring, and resurrection. This place formed his bones and his blood, and much of what is true about him. It made what is his, and what he has to share. It is from the residue of this experience that he forms his paintings.
Andy Vogt’s (b. 1970) work straddles the line between sculpture and drawing, or put another way; between the physical and the imagined. He often uses repetition of physical materials and variation of the material’s color to depict shapes that capitalize on our reflex to see dimension where none, or very little, exists in reality. The works included in “High Plains” are part of a series that utilizes thin strips of wood salvaged from the destruction of lath and plaster walls during the renovation of older buildings. The forms in this series are inspired by the moment of upheaval that architectural demolition brings. When the wrecking ball takes down a vintage building, the materials are thrown into chaos, lightened through the entropic release of force. For Vogt, they change states and become a drawing medium where new forms emerge from the dusty rubble.
High Plains runs from January 8 – February 26, 2022
For all inquiries, contact Johansson Projects at 510-444-9140 or info@johanssonprojects.com
Rachelle Bussières (Quebec City, Canada) received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in 2015. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Addressing the impact of light on our psyche, environment and social structure, Rachelle Bussières’ work is at the intersection of photography and sculpture, moving through a collision of materials and documents through the lumen photographic process. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Penumbra Foundation (NYC, USA), Johansson Projects (Oakland, USA) and Robert Koch Gallery (San Francisco, USA). Awards include the Penumbra Foundation Workspace Fellowship, Canada Council for the Arts, an honorable mention for the Snider Prize from MoCP, and being a Finalist for the Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize. Some recent group shows include Seattle Pacific University (Seattle, WA), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn), Soil Gallery (Seattle, WA), the General French Consulate (San Francisco, CA), the Wing (San Francisco, CA), the Center for Fine Art Photography (Fort Collins, CO), Minnesota Street Project (San Francisco, CA), Galerie l’Inlassable (Paris, FR), Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA) and Present Company (Brooklyn, NY). Her work is present in various public, corporate and private collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Four Seasons Hotel, SFMOMA Library and Archives, Facebook (commission mural) in Sunnyvale, Instagram Inc. in San Francisco and Penumbra Foundation in New York City. She is preparing a solo exhibition at Melanie Flood Projects (Portland, OR) in June 2021.
Blaise Rosenthal is a self-taught artist born in New York City in 1973. At the age of six, his family relocated to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Northern California, where he would spend the remainder of his formative years. He cites environmental archetypes formed during this period as a basis for his abstract vocabulary, and has used his extensive travels as a means of developing a broad context within which to place his work. Currently residing and working in Santa Cruz, California, Blaise utilizes simple materials such as charcoal, pastel, acrylic paint and canvas, and a focus on the dynamic nature of abstraction, to create paintings that offer both a subjective sincerity and an objective accessibility. In this way, this artist strives to create work that can transcend identity-oriented barriers and touch on fundamental aspects of our common human experience.
Andy Vogt grew up in the suburbs of Washington DC and attended Carnegie Mellon University where he earned a BFA in Intermedia, a program focused on time based media, performance and installation. He lived in Pittsburgh PA until 2000. His current work using reclaimed wood from demolished buildings, started around 2004, a few years after moving to San Francisco. Since then, his work has been exhibited nationally and locally including solo shows at Eli Ridgway Gallery, Eleanor Harwood Gallery, Southern Exposure, The Museum of Craft and Design and Ampersand International Arts. Group exhibitions include Headlands Center for the Arts, San Francisco State University Art Gallery, Swarm Gallery and Adobe Books Backroom Gallery. He also was an artist in residence at Headlands Center for the Arts. Andy lives and works in San Francisco, California.
Rachelle Bussières engages photographic materials and processes as a means of exploring the impact of light on our psyche, environment and social structures. She works with–fabricate, find, stack, fold, manipulate, assemble–objects as her point of departure in the creation of new documents. These arrangements are captured and transformed by exposing gelatin silver paper to different light sources. The products of this process, known as lumen printmaking, include photograms that oscillate between two-dimensional images and three-dimensional objects. These are windows on interior spaces that grow and are depleted by sunlight, as well as artificial light sources such as flashes and light bulbs. She seeks to generate new ways of seeing, to challenge our beliefs and intuitions about perception, and draw attention to the ways in which light and shadow sculpt new optical space. Existing at the intersection of photography and sculpture, her work addresses the limits of seeing and knowing through the fabrication of photographic exposures, investigating our wider human experience through light, perception and time.
Calaveras. Skulls. The first home Blaise Rosenthal remembers was on the edge of nowhere. At the end of a dirt road in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada he spent his formative years. The elemental character of this environment and its aesthetic vocabulary became archetypal for him. Earth, water, fire, and wind; all in local forms. Seasons. Dusty bare feet and no shirt through dry heat Summers, and the sound of crickets at night. Stars beyond counting. The still death of autumn. Winter, with rain on the roof, the smell of cold smoke, and darkness. And then spring, and resurrection. This place formed his bones and his blood, and much of what is true about him. It made what is his, and what he has to share. It is from the residue of this experience that he forms his paintings.
Andy Vogt’s work straddles the line between sculpture and drawing, or put another way; between the physical and the imagined. He often uses repetition of physical materials and variation of the material’s color to depict shapes that capitalize on our reflex to see dimension where none, or very little, exists in reality. The works included in “High Plains” are part of a series that utilizes thin strips of wood salvaged from the destruction of lath and plaster walls during the renovation of older buildings. The forms in this series are inspired by the moment of upheaval that architectural demolition brings. When the wrecking ball takes down a vintage building, the materials are thrown into chaos, lightened through the entropic release of force. For Vogt, they change states and become a drawing medium where new forms emerge from the dusty rubble.
The body of work in Sophie Treppendahl’s Homebody was inspired by her experience of the last two years. After having her life confined indoors, Treppendahl found she had fallen in love with being at home.
Treppendahl’s interior scenes are not aspirational clickbait. Instead, they are expressions of gratitude for the lived-in house: the clutter of a bathroom sink, the detritus of a dinner party, the surprise of light coming in through a window. These are homes that hold the weight of accumulated hours, bright colors of major and minor joys. A novelty mallard duck planter nests alongside family photos, a plant’s curious tendrils spread in front of a busy floral wallpaper.
Treppendhal pays homage to the painters who have influenced her by capturing the visual reality of how she encounters their work—through afternoons spent browsing art books, amid charging cables and cans of seltzer, takeout food and trinkets. Seen this way, a strange convergence takes place between the artists and the surrounding objects. Nested inside the larger canvas, they combine into a domestic plane, and create a snapshot of a painter at work.
The groove a couch shows after the five hundredth morning of continuous weight, a mug left on a table that one promises to pick up later. The distance between ourselves and our surroundings has collapsed. As a result, the works on display in Homebody can be understood as a collection of self-portraits. Treppendahl paints homes that function like a body, spaces that have become reflections–or extensions–of the self.
Homebody will run concurrently with SPOOLS, a solo exhibition in our side gallery with Oakland-based artist Nimah Gobir. The exhibitions open April 30 and will run through June 18, 2022, with an opening reception on Friday, May 6 from 5 to 8PM.
LitHub.com, “14 Contemporary Artists on How Reading Influences Their Work” March 2022 via Platform
The last two years have me (and all of us) feeling isolated, and I don’t think I realized how insular my practice was becoming until recently. This book [Funny Weather by Olivia Laing] was a healthy departure from my own head into someone else’s practice and a humbling reminder of the necessity of art, for all of us, in the face of challenging times.” Link
You Wanted A List, “Sophie Treppendahl” January 4, 2020
Sophie grew up in the small southern town of St. Francisville, Louisiana and currently resides in Chicago Illinois. She paints the places and objects in her life as a way of creating portraits of the people she loves. Link
Create! Magazine, “Sophie Treppendahl” November 1, 2018
Painter Sophie Treppendahl believes that life is full of enchantment….not always, but occasionally, in those unexpected moments when the ordinary of life seem to glimmer with vibrancy and ephemeral perfection. Link
The Jealous Curator, “Sophie Treppendahl” July 13, 2018
Well, I just found my new weekend wardrobe! These lovely oil paintings on paper are the work of American artist Sophie Treppendahl. They’re part of a series titled, “Clothes I Like Owned by People I Like”. I like them too! Link
Supersonic Art , “‘Cool & Collected’ at Kenise Barnes Fine Art.” July 13, 2018
The fourth iteration of “Cool & Collected,” the group exhibition offers work by five up and coming artists under the age of 35: Katie Barrie, Rebecca Levitan, Laini Nemett, Alex Osborne and Sophie Treppendahl. Link
Boston Art Review, “‘Code-Stitch: Resistance in Apparel’ Uses Clothing as a Platform for Feminine Resistance” April 20, 2018
Her work features simplistic yet colorful renditions of common clothing items: a Hawaiian print shirt, a vintage t-shirt, a simple patterned blouse. By removing the wearer of the clothing and instead capturing the pieces themselves, Treppendahl’s ideas correlate with Riesing and Bernier’s decision to extrapolate meaning from clothing choices. Link
The English Room, “Artist Spotlight Series: Sophie Margrette Treppendahl” August 17, 2015
I am constantly inspired by things around me, but still trying to figure out what exactly it is about those things that caught me. There is some perfect meeting of light, color, shadow, and slight awkwardness, and those are the bits that overwhelm me with inspiration. I don’t know how to find them or what the equation is, but I know when I see them. Link
Sophie Treppendahl (b. 1991, St. Francisville, LA) is a painter based in New Orleans, LA. Sophie is from St. Francisville, a small town north of where she now lives. Sophie’s work explores the feeling of longing for something just out of reach. Many of her works are portraits of people she loves, her subjects often depicted by their homes and objects in lieu of their figure. She is interested in the conundrum of painting her world of people and things while working alone inside a studio. Recent solo shows include Kenise Barnes Fine Art in Larchmont, NY (2020), Indianapolis Art Center in Indianapolis, IN (2019) and Quirk Gallery in Richmond, VA (2018), and forthcoming (2022) with Johansson Projects in Oakland, CA. She has attended residencies at Golden Foundation (2020), The Wassaic Project in Wassaic NY (2019), 100 W Corsicana in Corsicana, TX (2019), and Untitled 1983 in Geneva, Switzerland (2020). Sophie received her BA in painting and printmaking at College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina.