Matt Johnson’s Odalisque looks like it’s just been pinched into life from a bit of modelling clay. The head of this reclining figure is a blob that might have been rolled between finger and thumb while the feet and hands look like putty flippers. In fact it’s a bronze almost two metres long. A former student of the iconic Charles Ray, Johnson has clearly picked up his teacher’s genius for messing with scale and materials. Odalisque – which means concubine and refers to traditional nudes – also has its way with the pretensions of 19th century artists and their many sexy depictions of women pitched as high art. In an act of comic aggrandisement, Johnson turns an old-fashioned test study into a lolling Jabba The Hut of a sculpture.
This monster Morph is the centrepiece of the young Los Angelino sculptor’s witty European debut solo show. It’s surrounded by further riffs on art history – an angular carved stone head could be exactly the kind of tribal art that inspired primitivism, if it weren’t for the weird toupee of bronze bees whose turquoise-black forms look like a layer of mould growing on its head. Meanwhile in another switcheroo with subject and materials, the vast Grotesque at Prayer resembles a scrunched up bit of silver foil but is actually stainless steel.
In the chapel-like darkened adjoining space is the perfect counterpoint to Johnson’s hunks of monumental metal and stone: a full pack of American Spirit cigarettes, which miraculously hovers an inch or so above its spot lit plinth. Taking aim at art’s loftier aspirations, that floating box of smokes collides pop culture with spirituality, punning on transcendence as something literally uplifting and weightless. Something of a frontrunner of the LA art scene’s latest wave, with his penchant for visual gags and material inventiveness Johnson represents West Coast sculpture at its subversive, playful best.
Matt Johnson’s solo exhibition is at Alison Jacques Gallery, London until 13 November.
