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Pioneer Works ONLINE VIEWING ROOM
The concept of world-building lies at the center Jess Johnson’s work, which reflects her interests in science fiction, language, technology, and concepts of consciousness. Over several years, her drawings have documented an increasingly complex fictional world; they are meshworks of cultural symbology, humanoid clones, messianic figures, and alien r... more >> JESS JOHNSON was born in Tauranga, New Zealand in 1979. She lives and works in New York.
The concept of world-building lies at the center Jess Johnson’s work, which reflects her interests in science fiction, language, technology, and concepts of consciousness. Over several years, her drawings have documented an increasingly complex fictional world; they are meshworks of cultural symbology, humanoid clones, messianic figures, and alien runes placed in architectural settings.
In May of 2018, Johnson and her video collaborator Simon Ward premiered TERMINUS, a major five-part virtual reality commission and solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. TERMINUS is currently on a multi-year tour throughout Australasia. Johnson and Ward’s installation and video work, Whol Why Wurld, was a finalist for New Zealand’s Walter’s Prize 2018 and was exhibited at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. Jess’s second solo exhibition in the US, Panspermia, Sing Omega, opened at Jack Hanley Gallery in September 2019, and another solo show, Neon Meat Dream, her first in Japan, opened at Nanzuka Gallery in Tokyo in November 2019.
Since relocating to New York, Jess has undertaken a five-month studio residency at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY (2019); a month-long residency at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire (2018); a year-long studio residency at the International Curatorial & Studio Program in Brooklyn, NY (2016-2017); a ten-week residency for artists working in themes of science fiction at the Bemis Center in Nebraska (2016); and a month-long residency at the University of Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery in conjunction with a solo exhibition at the Edinburgh Arts Festival (2016).
