Johanna Evans
Experimentation, process, materiality, and perception are at the center of my practice.
I work predominantly with photography and video. In both the photographs and videos, materials are manipulated in front of the camera, with no post production. Making these works started as an attempt to gain a more tactile, personal, and immediate experience with digital media, by using and manipulating real physical stuff - paper, film, tape, blades, pins etc. The set up, the taping, cutting, ripping, are all integral parts of the pieces. The results are imbued with their own sense of internal logic and meaning, and have a slightly strange quality.
The photographs are part an ongoing series entitled Studio Horizons. They are visual studies of, and glimpses into, illusionistic space and place. Made entirely inside the studio, they are like little imagined or remembered landscapes, or future worlds yet to be seen. Different materials - colored plastics, mylar, film, old photos, are arranged and combined, then digitally photographed. The results start out on a small scale, like postcards collected from far off travels. They are then made into larger prints, which heightens their incongruities and spacial weirdness.
The videos are real time experiments in perception, both literal, physical/visual perception, and also a more internal, personal perception. There is a performative aspect at play, as well as a questioning and examining of the - maybe - futile-ness to the whole endeavor. Mylar is a material I use quite a lot of, there is endless fascination in it’s qualities of reflection and transparency, its ability to change and morph its surroundings, and its sound!
For more information about the artist, please visit her website.