A Gilded Planet

Another visit to Oakland Art Murmur last week has led me to conclude that Johansson Projects consistently presents the most compelling work among all the galleries I've visited on First Fridays. After February's Body Electric Victorian sci-fi fantasia , they may have topped themselves by displaying the lurid and vertiginous worlds created by Tadashi Moriyama in paintings, sculpture and animation. Like a monster reincarnation of Terry Gilliam and Hieronymous Bosch, Moriyama illustrates an intricate and intertwining panoply of neural degenerations, post-apocalyptic urban designs, classical forms, monetary signifiers, cosmic debris and technological phantasmagoria. Johansson Projects is an excellent destination for a trip through positively Borgesian imaginations.

Last Friday, I went to Oakland Art Murmur and saw a terrific exhibit at Johansson Projects that matches up perfectly with the technomystification I am encountering in my research on time in Victorian Britain. The exhibit was multimedia and included text, imagery and video. Some of the components were styled as old-timey advertisements (or perhaps disclaimers would be the better word) while others were paintings, prints or comic strips. The exhibit's theme explored an imagined historical fear of electricity transforming and bedeviling the human body and spirit. These poorly captured screenshots of the free program that I picked up at the gallery do not begin to do the exhibit justice. It's difficult to describe the curious excitement I felt in viewing the gleeful antiquarian anachronism of the work. I highly recommend checking out Follies of the Digital Arcade . PS - Here's some better images I grabbed from their website: