The artists’ multidisciplinary art practice blurs the lines between sculpture, photography, performance, poetry and virtual reality, fusing language with art.
Rindon Johnson and Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, The Bells Pursuing One Another, 2022. Animation by Pariah Interactive, Video Game Still. Courtesy of the artist & François Ghebaly.
Rindon Johnson (*1990 in San Francisco/USA, lives and works in Berlin) receives the Ernst Rietschel Art Prize for Sculpture 2022. Johnson is a visual artist and writer. His multidisciplinary art practice blurs the lines between sculpture, photography, performance, poetry and virtual reality, fusing language with art. Through the diverse forms of expression that move between language, object-based works with materials such as leather, wood, stone or glass and virtual reality, Johnson examines the effects of capitalism, racism, climate and technology on our everyday and social living environment in his works.
Johnson is presenting two works in the Albertinum. In collaboration with the artist Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork (*1982 in Long Beach/USA), he developed The Bells Pursuing One Another (2022), a CGI-animated film with a video game. Both levels are accessed from the first-person perspective, with the field of view corresponding to that of a Cuvier’s beaked whale diving. The aim is to catch a giant squid together with a partner whale in the depths of the Great Bahama Canyon. What ostensibly promises pleasure evokes the confrontation with the living conditions of the sea creatures and their massive threats through environmental destruction or the acoustic impairments caused by humans.
The work of art is accompanied by a large-format stained glass installation, which combines the sculptural work with the media. Film and play reflect the depths of the sea in black and white, the glass captivates with its intoxicating colourfulness. A total of 102 individual, square opalescent glass pieces are connected to each other by lead strips on a long incline of almost five meters. They capture the flow of the water and the vastness of the ever-changing sky. The Ernst Rietschel Art Prize for sculpture is awarded by the Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) together with the Antonius Jugend-und Kulturförderung eV, which donates the prize money. An independent jury decided on the award.
The exhibition will be on view form the 26th of August until the 27th of November 2022. For more information, please visit Albertinum Dresden.
