BY ALEX HO

In print | February 1, 2007

Sue Johnson’s art exhibit “Cabinet of Wonders: Marvelous Transformations and Other Accidental Images,” on display in the List Gallery in the Lang Performing Arts Center, inhabits the strange interface between biology, mass culture, sexual iconography and food, among other things. The installation opened on Jan. 25 with a lecture by Johnson. One of Johnson’s many eclectic fixations that recur throughout her work is the concept of the encyclopedia and the visual artistry that is involved in such amassing of supposedly authoritative knowledge. It was only fitting that her lecture, entitled “Wonder, Transformation and the Nature of Artifice,” was structured like an alternative encyclopedia, in which she presented to her audience several entries under the letter “s”.

The title of Ms. Johnson’s exhibition is drawn from the “cabinet de curiousités,” also known as Wunderkammer, or “wonder-rooms,” that were popular among European aristocracy during the 17th century. These were collections of various objects - preserved animals and geological specimens, relics and cultural artifacts from “exotic” lands - that were regarded as important contributions to science but often had little to do with one another.

Sue Johnson, the Steven Muller distinguished professor of the arts and chair of the art and art history department at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, was a fitting find for the List Gallery. List Gallery Director Andrea Packard said, “We try to show work in a range of media and also to feature a variety of approaches to image making.” Johnson’s exhibition, like the “wonder-rooms,” bring a subtext to unrelated objects and goes further to make the presentation of her artwork itself a subject of curiosity. “Together with the studio faculty, I was impressed by the quality of her work and the way she explores the role of the artist in shaping science and popular culture,” Packard said. “She looks at the way the presentation methods of galleries and museums lend an authority and primacy to certain images.”

The gallery is divided into three major sections. The first, “Poem-objects,” features two sets of small gouache paintings. Each of the small paintings combines two disparate images, like a chicken and a glass of water, daring us to superimpose an explicit meaning onto the picture. Even the presentation of the images with respect to one another—they form two pyramids, one right-side-up, one upside-down—are curiously reductive.

The second section is entitled “Abstractions.” It displays vintage biology diagrams from the turn of the century that Johnson has altered in provoking ways. In “Muscle Candyland,” Johnson explores the beauty of the visual representation of human musculature by extending these sinewy images beyond the human form in a completely abstract context. Another, “After Magritte),” is a response to the famous work by Rene Magritte. Its vaguely head-shaped image created from a chart of the male reproductive system is, as Packard describes, “a self-conscious inversion of misogynist imagery.” “Abstractions” were especially interesting for Black Roberts ‘07. "As a bio major, I’ve definitely seen these anatomical diagrams before, and to see them transformed into something else is really cool," she said. “I respond to them aesthetically even if there is some symbolic meaning.”

The final section, “Episodes in a Fantastic Landscape,” is possibly the most comprehensive look at the many ideas behind Johnson’s works. These panorama-sized collages fuse various found images with her own paintings and even, in one instance, the huge digital scanning of salami. In one work, layers of different food create something akin to the familiar geological cross section of strata. In another, the body cavity of an organism looks like a trumpet.

Sue Johnson’s apparent obsession with the Victorian era and anthropomorphic images may seem somewhat odd, but a look at “Cabinet of Wonders: Sources and Resources,” her supplementary exhibition in the first floor of McCabe, will explain a lot. The installation matches reproductions of Johnson’s work with their sources of inspiration. You can read about her influences from the Surrealism movement, particularly the works of Magritte, Max Ernst and André Breton.

The exhibit also displays two Victorian era books, “Les Fleurs Animees” and “The Secret Lives of Insects,” anthropomorphic fantasies that were highly influential to Johnson. “Anthropomorphism has always been an interest of mine as it deals with not just the relation between nature and humans, but the way we perceive this relationship,” she said. “almost seek to differentiate us from nature, when really there is no distinction; we’re all the same.” Pamela Harris, the McCabe instruction and outreach librarian, who collaborated with Johnson on the exhibits, didn’t feel that Johnson’s works were at all tongue-in-cheek. “When she looked at the way people drew insects and human anatomy from the turn of the century, she was looking at them as works of art.”

Along with these references, the McCabe exhibit also features many items from Johnson’s own collections — merchandise from “A Bug’s Life” and a Frosted Flakes box featuring Tony the Tiger, for example. As Johnson explains, “Victorians were very much collectors themselves. From the 15th to 17th centuries, there was an explosion of popular culture and ephemera.”

There are plenty of opportunities to experience the innovation of Sue Johnson’s works. Her “Cabinet of Wonders” will be staying at the List Gallery and the McCabe Library until Feb. 28.

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