Description

At the center of a frenzied mosaic, an abstract, fractured figure stares, wide-eyed, out at the viewer. Standing Broken Men and a related series of mixed-media mosaic works grew out of Johnson’s Anxious Men and Anxious Audiences series (2015–18) in which the artist used frantic marks to render abstracted faces in gridded formations. As Standing Broken Men exemplifies, Johnson continues to make vivid the experience of anxiety, now composing figures through fragmented shards. Through this technique, brokenness is inherent in the figures and the pictorial worlds they inhabit. However, their pieces are reassembled into dynamic colorful wholes, suggesting the possibility for healing and renewal.