Johnston Foster
Johnston Foster’s work employs found materials, the refuse of our roadside ditches and parking lot dumpsters, mostly comprised of the plastic objects and materials so ubiquitous in contemporary life and so bio-degradably impossible to eliminate. Foster intricately cuts, bends, folds, melts, and wraps these materials into 3-dimensional narratives of immense conceptual depth. Foster’s work is strongly related to a sculptural lineage from, say, Tim Hawkinson’s creations from unexpected materials, to Robert Rauschenburg’s “combines’, to Marcel Duchamp’s ground breaking employment of ordinary objects, and Michelangelo’s genius for turning formless material into detailed and textural replications of life. Foster’s work also invokes the history of subjects in painting, in particular those eras of pronounced narrative inclinations emphasizing social and individual responsibility: 17th Century Baroque and 19th Century Romanticism. In Foster’s work whimsy and humor co-exist with their darker side, an opposition necessary to invoke thought and meaning as the best of humor is often drawn from the experience of struggle and near failing. A “Sticky Situation” is marked by a resistance to change and manifests as an unpredictable and difficult predicament to escape from, a place in which we collectively find ourselves today in economic, political, and environmental concerns.
r. grover 08/09/07.
Johnston Foster was born in South Boston, Virginia. He holds a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, an MFA from Hunter College, New York City, and attended the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Since 2000, Foster’s work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally with recent venues to include: “Season’s in the Abyss” 2007, Illinois State University Galleries, Norman, IL; “Lieu d’Images et d’Art” (LIA), 2007, Grenoble, France; “Summertime Blues” 2008, Rare Gallery, NYC; “Johnston Foster: Altered Beast” 2008, Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach, VA; galerieXprssns, 2009, Hamburg, Germany; and brot und spiele galerie, 2009, Berlin, Germany. Foster currently teaches sculpture at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. Foster is represented by Rare Gallery, NYC.
Big Tipper, 2008
