Dion Johnson

Dion Johnson is a Los Angeles based artist. His paintings combine and explore dynamic opposites: expansiveness and compression, surface and depth, and darkness and light. Gradient color fields are juxtaposed to and interwoven with planes of precise hardedge abstraction. These color fades are both intimate and vast – they may reflect internal moods with wandering thoughts and insightful realizations, or they may suggest vivid sunsets on Mercury or Mars with chemical skies and radiant perspectives. The hardedge shapes seem to reach up and stretch down; their elongated curves, interlocking contours, and bold colors allude to kinetic sensations and evolving environments.

 It’s something like shifting gears in a high-performance automobile, only smoother and swifter and, when you stand back and take in the complex rhythms that Johnson has orchestrated, defined by a kind of simultaneity that is not possible in race cars, whose engines have gears that must be moved through sequentially.

– David Pagel, ‘Abstract Painting in Los Angeles,’ Gallery Magazine, June 2017

EXHIBITIONS

Future Perfect