“These seemingly calm arrangements of gently curved shapes, in a sumptuously saturated and wildly unnatural palette, are anything but wallflowers. They play with scale like nobody’s business, filling the empty space around them with inclusive, user-friendly snippets of imagined symphonies. As quickly as they energize the space around them, Johnson’s idiosyncratic compositions set up kinky rhythms—beats and echoes that lead one way only to be interrupted by any number of possibilities. Sometimes, a band of color squeezes another until it’s as thin a pinstripe. At other times, wide chunks of color appear to expand, as if the painted surface were breathing. At still others, peek-a-boo slivers of translucent tones open up to suggest deep space—not quite the unfathomable vastness of the cosmos but the soul-expanding openness of a sun-drenched summer sky. A handful of Johnson’s eccentric configurations include brightly colored lines that define shapes that seem to await being filled in, as if they were the long lost relatives of a kid’s coloring book. Most of the shapes in Johnson’s paintings are oriented vertically, either extending from top to bottom edge or coming to a rounded point just before the bottom is reached, like a cartoon drip or an impossibly long and gorgeously polished fingernail. Time does not stand still in these paintings so much as they suspend you in long drawn-out moments of acutely satisfying attentiveness.”
David Pagel
excerpt from Rebecca Ibel Gallery ‘Rcent Paintings’ catalog essay
Dion Johnson is presently based in Los Angeles, California and is represented by Western Project, Los Angeles, CA
Education
2000 Master of Fine Arts, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California
1997 Bachelor of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
1996 Yale Norfolk Summer School of Music and Art, Norfolk, CT
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2011 ‘Dion Johnson,’ Western Project, Los Angles, CA
2009 ‘Brilliant Frequencies,' Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, OH
‘Shadows and Vistas,’ Project 210, Pasadena, CA
‘Twilight,’ Cypress College Fine Arts Gallery, Cypress, CA
2008 ’Isotope Series,’ Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, OH
2007 ‘Works on Paper’ Empathy Design Company, South Pasadena, CA
2005 ‘Radiance,’ Carl Berg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
‘Continuous Transmission,’ Desiree’ Synder Gallery, Sarasota, FL
2004 ‘New Paintings: Project Room,’ Stephen Stux Gallery, New York, NY
‘Wow and Flutter,’ Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, OH
2002 'Popsicle Scenarios,' Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, OH
'Softer Frequencies,' Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
2001 'Paintings,' Bill Maynes Gallery, New York, NY
2000 Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, OH
Selected Group Exhibitions
2011 ‘About Paint,’ Carl Berg Projects, West Hollywood, CA
2010 ‘Set Theory,’ Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA
‘Construction Zone,’ Western Project, Los Angles, CA
2009 ‘Western Project: The First Six Years,’ Western Project, Culver City, CA
‘Drawings,’ Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, OH
2008 ‘Plush,’ curated by Martin Durazo, Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, CA
2007 ‘Family Garden,’ curated by Shana Nys Dambrot and Elizabeth Paige Smith, Elizabeth Paige Smith Atelier, Venice, CA
2006 ‘Dion Johnson, Sush Machida Gaikotsu and Kelly McCormick,’ Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, OH
2004 ‘Observations,’ Carl Berg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
‘Reordering Reality: Collecting Contemporary Art,’ The Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH
2003 ‘Fresh: Works on Paper, A Fifth Anniversary,’ James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM
'Ten Years in Columbus, Part 1,' Rebecca Ibel Gallery, Columbus, OH