Do you love Jack Hanley Gallery? For better or worse, in many ways Jack’s our King Midas, the only guy in the last decade to make a deep and convincing dent in the international art scene from a perch in “provincial” San Francisco (Paule Anglim deserves credit for doing this a decade or two earlier). Jack does deserves more credit here and especially among curators and other dealers for his vision and follow through; where many have simply complained or been pushed aside, Jack’s got things done and perhaps in some tiny way inflected the course of contemporary art history. Later this month he’ll be one of only two San Francisco based galleries at the super hip and exclusive Armory Show in New York (the other’s Ratio 3). His “Mission School” artists have gone onto some of the biggest and most important achievements of recent memory for artists that had their start here. Barry McGee was one of these and Chris Johanson is another.

Installation view at Jack Hanley Gallery

Johanson’s “big break” was probably his participation in the 2002 Whitney Biennial, though a SECA through SFMOMA in 2003 certainly helped boost his international notoriety as well. Like many recent talented Bay Area artists (very sadly) he’s relocated to Portland, Oregon, I’m guessing for great quality of life and cheaper cost of living. Where’s the city government subsidized work/live spaces for our most talented artists, Gavin Newsom? What happened to that big report on arts in the city and implementing your committee’s suggestions? OK, that’s a digression…

You and I were there, you and I are there, 2007
16" x 22.75"

Johanson’s current offerings at Jack Hanley’s unassuming Valencia Street space are best described as a chaotic installation of pounded 2 x 4 and plywood lumber punctuated by bright pictures. It’s a rats maze of surprisingly placed “paintings” in a naïve and erotic/quixotic tangle of color and vague forms, interacting figures and hard to discern activities. If you look for them, references to other artists seem to abound; Hockney in You and I were there, you and I are there and a wide range of Op artists in pieces like Contemporary Situation #1 and That no longer matters.

Contemporary Situation#1, 2008
31" x 44"

One thing you can often count on with programming at Hanley is that it will be dangerous, not like visually dangerous, but literally dangerous. To get through Johanson’s built up maze, you’re going to have to duck and step over lumber. There may even be a protruding nail or screw here or there. And you might get vertigo and wonder how he did that in such a small space. I wish he’d used a box of rusty screws and that the gallery staff would blithely offer tetanus kits as you leave. And this isn’t the first time they’ve gone for dangerous; Johanson’s recent A Collaboration with Kal Spelletich was full of buzzing, whirling and pounding machines that could really hurt somebody—it was huge fun to press buttons and play with them; kids were especially fond and parents had to closely supervise.

That no longer matters, 2008
37.5" x 45.375"

If you can sneak away at lunch from the 9 to 5, going in and getting disoriented by Johanson’s current project is certainly worth your time; you’ll walk away confounded at how he fit so many ideas and images into such a small area, and maybe you’ll even feel a little pride at his significant career which sprang from a launch pad right here in the Mission. And maybe you’ll bang your head on one of those gray painted 2 x 4’s.

Chris Johanson's work will be on view at the Jack Hanley Gallery through April 12th.