Oakland Art Murmur 5-9pm
On First Friday each month. Next Reception is February 3rd at 5pm.
Generously sponsored by Ninkasi
Johansson Projects In The Press:
"...Johansson Projects Gallery is the gateway to the neighborhood's art spaces — hip enough to draw fashionable grad students and host rocking parties, professional enough to garner national press. Expect fresh, meticulously well-installed artwork that's experimental but not obtuse, intellectually engaging but not impaled on ivory-tower exclusivity, often local but never provincial. The facade is inconspicuous, so look for the old-Hollywood-style spotlight..." Link - Kris Vagner
New Document in The Press:
"Hunter Longe and Matthew Draving's floor-bound sculpture Open Screen Unit grounds many of the ideas afoot in this concise group show... The title indicates that this "screen" is not a surface for the serial, filmic play of images, but a site that responds to the simultaneous, software-enabled production of images. Indeed, throughout the exhibition screens are employed not as spaces of fixity or one-way transmission, but as sites open to fluidity and mutation by their environment and the user..."
Jennie Ottinger In The Press:
Kenneth Baker for SF Chronicle Picks: Link "...As the e-readers gain ground, expect to see more contemporary artists playing out their feelings for the book as object. San Franciscan Jennie Ottinger scores a small but early triumph with her show "Due By." It mainly consists of hollowed-out fiction classics for which she has made new dust jackets in her gnomic style. Each book contains her hand-written synopsis, substituting cynical wit and backhanded appreciation for the original detail that it replaces."
"...Jennie Ottinger has a knack for editing a situation down to its most poignant essentials. In her bountiful solo exhibition Due By at Johansson Projects in Oakland, she continues to apply this talent to painting, both in gouache and oil and also extends into literature and book art. She's successful throughout... Ottinger delivers a seriously fun cultural romp with just the right dose of neurosis-inducing discomfort. This is a show that lingers long after you've departed from the ghostly images and time-honored texts." -Cherie Louise Turner for the Huffington Post Link
"...Her sparse painting style with its isolated blocks of color and unfinished details is a natural fit for the moments she chooses to illustrate: funerals, court hearings, soldiers at war. I like that she doesn't necessarily paint the most famous parts of the books either, and instead the images acquire a sort of universality only heightened if like me you've read only a smattering of the Great Novels. In addition to her paintings Ottinger has also repurposed a series of hardbacks, wrapping them in painted jackets and excavating the pages so to insert her own blunt, laugh-out-loud synopses of the stories..." - Heidi DeVries for Engineer's Daughter Blog Link
"...Jennie’s paintings grab you and don’t let go. There is something so honest and human about her work – the crude and sometimes uglier side of people, peppered with a heavy dose of wit. She is one of my favorite contemporary artists..." - Kate Singleton of Art Hound
"...Ottinger's retellings — handwritten in a tiny, tidy scrawl that resembles birdtracks across fresh snow — are by far the best thing in "Due By." Her observations are pithy, and at times, flash an understated brilliance. Ottinger is also, on occasion, not above proclaiming her ignorance of the text she's writing on and doesn't hesitate to quote Wikipedia and SparkNotes for backup..." - Matt Sussman of SF Bay Guardian Link
"...Her (Ottinger's) irreverent editorial comments and short, snappy sentences harbor many satirical gems...sprinkling her deadpan retelling with stream-of-consciousness banter. Like watching an overwrought movie with a bitingly witty friend, reading Ottinger's stripped-down plot summaries undermines the glossy veneer of prestige that these books have acquired from being endlessly praised in classrooms and book clubs. Though her work sometimes jabs at the hierarchical thinking associated with literary scholarship, Ottinger's ultimate intention for "Due By" was to respond to our society's quick-and-easy approach to all activities, not only reading..." -Nastia Vovnovskava of the Daily Californian Link
"...Ottinger's retellings — handwritten in a tiny, tidy scrawl that resembles birdtracks across fresh snow — are by far the best thing in "Due By." Her observations are pithy, and at times, flash an understated brilliance. Ottinger is also, on occasion, not above proclaiming her ignorance of the text she's writing on and doesn't hesitate to quote Wikipedia and SparkNotes for backup..." - Matt Sussman of SF Bay Guardian Link
"...Her (Ottinger's) irreverent editorial comments and short, snappy sentences harbor many satirical gems...sprinkling her deadpan retelling with stream-of-consciousness banter. Like watching an overwrought movie with a bitingly witty friend, reading Ottinger's stripped-down plot summaries undermines the glossy veneer of prestige that these books have acquired from being endlessly praised in classrooms and book clubs. Though her work sometimes jabs at the hierarchical thinking associated with literary scholarship, Ottinger's ultimate intention for "Due By" was to respond to our society's quick-and-easy approach to all activities, not only reading..." -Nastia Vovnovskava of the Daily Californian Link
"...Johansson Projects, has quietly but quickly won a reputation as one of the Bay Area venues to watch for new art..." Link - Kenneth Baker SF Chronicle
"Jennie Ottinger was definitely the standout at Nada and the red dots by nearly every one of her painting confirmed we were not alone in feeling this way. We love the gesture of her brush, the soft color palette and their unfinished nature." Kiss and Tell Link
Art in America Review by Matt Sussman:Link
"Ottinger is light on fuss and has a gift for economic gestures: she knows how to work a smudge into something horrifically mouthlike... there is almost a comic existential horror to this image (Public Pool) -it evokes the moment when Wile E. Coyote stops running in midair and looks down...Her paintings seem to caution that in life as in death, we risk becoming metonymically condensed into the personal effects-the pictures and documents-that offer only limited proof of our existence."
Kenneth Baker SF Chronicle Link
"She has a voluminous, involving show at Johansson Projects in Oakland..put a few of Ottinger's pieces together, put "Man Chat" (2009) next to almost any of them, say, and specious narratives begin stirring in the mind..The peculiar key of Ottinger's art - intent yet relaxed, a sort of soft-focus tunnel vision - lets it evoke the inner zone where memories of real life, of mediated images, of dreams and of images elicited by stories mingle and get confused...
Artslant by Andy Ritchie Link
"...Superman costume...When cannily placed near a government-issue personal identification sheet (hand drawn with verisimilitude) and a painting of a school teacher in situ—the modern-day Clark Kent—the associations brim with hilarity. I stumbled around the gallery aimlessly after a while, rereading and revising each story...
Art in America Review by Matt Sussman:Link
"Ottinger is light on fuss and has a gift for economic gestures: she knows how to work a smudge into something horrifically mouthlike... there is almost a comic existential horror to this image (Public Pool) -it evokes the moment when Wile E. Coyote stops running in midair and looks down...Her paintings seem to caution that in life as in death, we risk becoming metonymically condensed into the personal effects-the pictures and documents-that offer only limited proof of our existence."
Kenneth Baker SF Chronicle Link
"She has a voluminous, involving show at Johansson Projects in Oakland..put a few of Ottinger's pieces together, put "Man Chat" (2009) next to almost any of them, say, and specious narratives begin stirring in the mind..The peculiar key of Ottinger's art - intent yet relaxed, a sort of soft-focus tunnel vision - lets it evoke the inner zone where memories of real life, of mediated images, of dreams and of images elicited by stories mingle and get confused...
Artslant by Andy Ritchie Link
"...Superman costume...When cannily placed near a government-issue personal identification sheet (hand drawn with verisimilitude) and a painting of a school teacher in situ—the modern-day Clark Kent—the associations brim with hilarity. I stumbled around the gallery aimlessly after a while, rereading and revising each story...
Johansson Projects voted Best Gallery two years in a row. Read:
Review 2008
Review 2009
Gift Certificates Available
To Order:
T- 510-444-9140
E- info@johanssonprojects.com