Symmetrical Bodies
April 26 - June 14, 2025
gallery neptune & brown
1530 14th Street, NW
Washington, DC. 20005
Johnson observes the world through the lens of a cultural historian. In her exhibition Symmetrical Bodies, Johnson uses the unattainable perfection and beauty of bodily symmetry to comment on the social representation of women, glamor, and domesticity. Through the distortions of these images, Johnson questions and re-imagines these “perfect bodies”, confronting societal notions of beauty that influence our understanding of female identity.
COLLECTive Concerns: Collage and Assemblage
Traveling exhibition curated by Reni Gower, opening November 2024 at the Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, GA. Traveling through 2026 to: University Art Gallery, Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, MI; Mills Station Arts & Culture Center, Rancho Cordova, CA; Piedmont Museum of Art, Martinsville, VA; Phillips Museum of Art, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA; Gumenick Family Gallery, Glen Allen Art Center, Glen Allen, VA.
15 works from Hall of Portraits from The History of Machines,
Catalog available.
Sue Johnson’s Jacquard tapestry works from her Ten Most Wanted Women series appear in the exhibition, POP! Art with Mass Appeal from May 3 – September 22, 2024. Juried by Keri Towler, Director of Collections at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the exhibition showcases artworks that capture the essence or provide commentary on pop art’s evolution in the digital age.
In Johnson’s Ten Most Wanted Women series, she looks back at mid-20th century commercial culture in America, at time when the new modern woman began to be and was idealized as sharing attributes with objects of domestic convenience, efficiency, and planned obsolescence. The Jacquard woven tapestries feature oversized portrait heads deriving from archival research and find historical context in Andy Warhol’s controversial Thirteen Most Wanted Men which was exhibited at the 1964 World’s Fair, New York State Pavilion.
Opening reception: Friday, May 3, 5-7pm
Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Art Center
13470 Dowell Road, Solomons, MD 20688
Mesh
A Juried National Exhibition of Screenprinted Works
On View: March 15–April 28, 2024
Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, Hyattsville, MD
From the brightly colored to the naturally muted, Mesh offers a wide range of art that celebrates the possibilities of screenprinting. Thirty-four works and the same number of artists are featured in this exhibition. Selected from nearly 300 submissions, included artworks showcase both conventional and unconventional applications of the art practice.
Mesh asked artists to consider the history of screenprinting, its technical contexts, and its diverse applications when submitting their work. The fine art of screenprinting has primitive antecedents as evidenced in the stenciled imagery on prehistoric cave walls. In modern times, artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein used stencil material attached to or embedded in a mesh of fiber, metal, or synthetic plastic filaments. The process has been applied in decorative arts, textile printing, advertising posters, street and political art, among other areas. Today, screenprinting has a widespread current presence in commercial signage, t-shirts, ceramics, furniture, and packaging.
Image: Sue Johnson, three screenprinted wallpapers from Subliminality (Sample Worlds), 2014.
