BOOTH 532, PIER 94
Covered in blackboard paint and chalk, Kysa Johnson has completely transformed our Armory booth into her black and white interpretation of a Bank of America waiting room. Johnson's chalk markings of subatomic decay patterns (the signature pathways that unstable particles travel along when they decay and transform into other subatomic particles) pour over an artificial plant and waiting room furniture. On the wall, these patterns of decay layer to build a composition of tumbling Roman ruins based on an amalgamation of images by the 18th century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
These subatomic patterns correlate with larger movements of people, history and time, suggesting the inevitability of decline in all aspects of the natural and man-made world. As depicted through her renderings of Piranesi's Roman ruins, Johnson refers specifically to the cycle of empires rising, falling and being replaced. In this modern day corporate waiting room, Johnson draws a parallel to the empires of our own time. As we struggle to find our place in history, her work urges us to consider the full scale of what we are a part of, in both milliseconds and millennia.
