High Plains

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 Press Links

Blaise Rosenthal Press Links

Andy Vogt Press Links

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.