TOPOGRAFIE dell’ANIMA

For the Fall exhibition at the AFRAGOLA Hi-Speed Train Station AV, located among the rolling hills of Napoli Italy, the cultural institution ART1307 invited the Californian artist Stephen Robert Johns to engage his own personal organic design dialogue with the architecture of Zaha Hadid.
In this exhibition, which is part of the larger “Traveling with Zaha” project conceived by the architect Antonella Iovino with the curatorship of Cynthia Penna, the American artist has focused his dialogue on “terrestrial architectures” formed by the different morphology of the land or by the agricultural crops that he “discovered” during his air travels between California and Costa Rica, where he also lives and works for part of the year.
The aerial perspective offers a much broader and slightly “arched” horizon than the horizon from below, which we are all used to.
The lines of mountains, rivers and agricultural crops create a different and fascinating topography, which in this context of the AFRAGOLA station, engages with the dynamic architecture of Zaha Hadid, a dialogue made up of organic forms, sinuous and sensual lines, that intertwine and overlap each other and create unreal topographies, with more projections of the soul than precise surveys of the ground below.
Untangling himself in this dance of lines, Johns creates new landscapes, and a different way of seeing our planet, real and unreal at the same time. In Johns’ world the Earth breathes, feeds, welcomes: its ideal topographies which serve to engage the viewer with questions, explorations and discoveries, in a light and never threatening atmosphere.
A topography that moves from nature towards the soul.
Stephen R. Johns was born in Los Angeles in 1948; he lives and works between Los Angeles and Costa Rica where he has established his second residence for many years. His training includes 3 years of studies at the historic and prestigious Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1967 to 1970 and a BFA Graduate at Cal Arts, Valencia, between 1970 and 1972. He is considered one of the great artists belonging to the Hard Edge movement and American minimalism.
He has exhibited his works in many national and international public and private institutions in Japan, Costa Rica and the United States. His works are part of prestigious collections in the USA and abroad. He is represented by Kylin Gallery in Beverly Hills and ART 1307 in Los Angeles and Naples, Italy.
All works are courtesy of the artist and ART1307