(1973, Escandinavia)

Simen Johan He is a contemporary Scandinavian artist, photographer, and sculptor living in New York.

He was born in Kirkenes, in the far north of Norway, to a Sami father and a Norwegian mother. He moved to Höllviken, Sweden in 1979. After attending film school at Lugnetskolan in Falun, Sweden, Johan moved to New York City in 1992 to continue his studies at the School of Visual Arts. He soon moved to the photography program, where he studied with Duane Michals, James Casebere, and Gregory Crewdson.

In 1993 Johan garnered attention for his pioneering work combining digital manipulation with traditional darkroom techniques. At a time when digital photo processing was in its infancy, Johan found ways to exploit the medium beyond the limits of what was then considered possible. His images re-combined fragments of faces and bodies (including his own) into new characters, which he later placed in similarly fabricated scenes. By inverting his files and then printing them on transparent film, Johan was able to produce “negatives”, allowing him to use traditional darkroom processes to create sepia-toned silver gelatin prints. In the mid-1990s, his work was featured frequently in exhibitions spearheading digital art, including “Bit by Bit: Post-photographic Imaging” at Hunter College, New York, and “(R) evolution” at the Museo della Scienza della Tecnología “. Leonardo da Vinci” in Milan, Italy.

Until the Kingdom Comes, 2011

With his “Evidence of Things Unseen” series (2000-2004), Johan began creating large-format color prints. In a review for The Village Voice, Vince Aletti wrote: “Johan’s new photos continue to enter a troubled dream world where fantasy and ritual meet. In virtually all of these images, lonely and self-possessed youngsters seem Participating in “strange masquerades … There is an edge of horror and disorder in these photos that is even more disturbing because it looks as much a projection of the child’s imagination as that of the photographer.” Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Norway, and the National Museum of Lithuanian Art organized a traveling exhibition of this series AD Coleman wrote the catalog essay.

In 2005 Johan changed his approach to the natural world, at the same time that he started creating sculptural works. Images from his “Until the Kingdom Comes” series incorporate elements photographed in a wide variety of locations around the world, including wild and captive animals. According to the New Yorker, “At nearly six feet by eight feet, the largest image rivals natural history dioramas, but very little is natural in this collection of animals. A deer in a snowy forest is incredibly white; malevolent snakes They curl around the sticks and each other in a sunny ravine, like Dante’s fugitives from hell. Johan undermines even his most compelling fictions, and the lingering feeling that something is wrong here keeps viewers right where he wants us: at the border “. The sculptures, as they appear in the New York Times “incorporate taxidermy, insects and foliage in parasitic ecosystems that resonate with the vitality of ritual headdresses”, while others, in the form of a meteorite, were built from barnacles, cement and optical fiber. Solo exhibitions of “Until the Kingdom Comes” were presented at Brown University, Providence, RI; the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville and at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX. A limited edition book was published in 2014.

Johan received the New York Foundation for the Art Scholarship in 2002, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Scholarship in 2009, and the George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation Scholarship for Photography in 2012. His work has appeared in the covers of Aperture (magazine) and Art + Auction, and he was interviewed on WNYC’s Leonard Lopate radio show. In 2010, Comme des Garçons used Johan’s sculpture of a long-haired wolf for his fall advertising campaign. His image of a buffalo reclining in the dirt was featured in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street movie: Money Never Sleeps. He has published several monographs, including one by Twin Palms Publishers that was confiscated by Neverland Ranch during the Michael Jackson trial in 2005. Johan has been represented by the Yossi Milo Gallery since 2000.