NYAB Event - Ryan Johnson "Watchman"

Ryan Johnson "Watchman"

Guild & Greyshkul

This event has ended.

For his first solo exhibition in New York, Ryan Johnson presents six large sculptures that explore the psychological and imaginative narratives built in and around the subject of a Watchman. The Watchman’s solitary endless night shift erodes the distinction between the real and the imagined creating a hallucinatory space where functional objects are appendages, racing clocks stare back, and his own anxieties materialize a self-image that is nightmarishly distorted and disfigured.

The gallery is divided into three distinct spaces. Upon entering, there is a long hallway leading to a small back room where the Watchman stands. He has become a manifestation of his obsessions, composed of the objects that make up his existence. Turning from the Watchman, the larger main room is populated by five monumental empty body-casts made primarily with casting tape. These abstracted totem-like statues, the scale of which imposes a much larger shared trauma, conflate a private interiority with the public imaginary; these statues are not just the inner machinations of the Watchman’s wandering mind. The inclusion of markers attached via small aluminum chains that are built-in to the sculptures encourage visitors to sign, write, or draw on the casts the same way one might decorate a friend’s cast who has broken their arm. However, these chained writing implements bring to mind the chained pens in banks, which allow a certain level of freedom within a controlled ritualized space. The sculptures are considered complete once the exhibition is over and the markers are cut from the chains.