Kysa Johnson

Kysa Johnson

My work explores patterns in nature that exist at the extremes of scale. Using the shapes of diseases and cures, maps of the universe, or the molecular structure of pollutants – in short, microscopic or macroscopic “landscapes” – it depicts a physical reality that is invisible to the naked eye. In rendering these forms in drawings and paintings the subject is removed from a purely scientific context and introduced into the arena of visual culture. There the possibility is presented of forming a new relationship with the subject at hand: to see, for example, whooping cough or pneumonia not simply as scourges in human history, but as phenomena to be appreciated on their own terms. As that investigation has continued another layer has evolved. These series of drawings and paintings also depict structures that occur in nature at a level hidden to the naked eye, but these images of the microscopic are now also used as building blocks to create a composition to which they are conceptually related. One level of the subject at hand forms a composition representing another level of that thing or idea. These microscopic yet fundamental parts of our physical universe are placed in the broader context of history and art and the stories that we create around them by the composition they form. One level is clinical and physical and one is emotional and historical.

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