Johnna Arnold: Energy and Form

Artist in Conversation:
* Saturday, April 2, 2:00 pm

Exhibition Dates:
* March 3 – April 12

Featuring unique photograms, mixed media photographs and unique oil resistance prints, Johnna Arnold builds upon her thinking in the series, From Inside This Earth (2019), again tapping into the material that drives much of our civilization – motor oil.

In Energy and Form, Arnold created unique C-prints by enlarging individual samples of used motor oil. In some images Arnold combined Oil with materials that speak to the interwoven web of energy around us, while in others she created forms within the images of Oil itself.

To amplify the infinite interconnections between forms, Arnold weaves iridescent thread into the surface of select pieces, drawing attention to shape, texture, and line.

Pointing to the interconnections highlighted through globalization, Arnold made three new pieces with crude oil mail-ordered from Azerbaijan. The Oil was transferred onto paper in a technique based on the perpetual resistance of oil and water.

Re-contextualizing and acknowledging the transformational nature of Oil in our daily lives is integral to establishing a new appreciation for all the earth provides.

Join us for a conversation with Johnna Arnold and Matthew D. Segall – “Motor Oil and Panpsychism” – to go deeper into Johnna’s current exhibition Energy and Form.

Matthew D. Segall, PhD, received his doctoral degree in 2016 from the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS. His dissertation was titled Cosmotheanthropic Imagination in the Post-Kantian Process Philosophy of Schelling and Whitehead. It grapples with the limits to knowledge of reality imposed by Kant’s transcendental form of philosophy and argues that Schelling and Whitehead’s process-oriented approach (described in his dissertation as a “descendental” form of philosophy) shows the way across the Kantian threshold to renewed experiential contact with reality. He teaches courses on German Idealism and process philosophy for the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program at CIIS.