Devin B. Johnson
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur
Installation View
Nicodim, New York, 2023
Certain states of belonging are distinct to us each, alloys of unique experiences, memories, spaces, encounters which synthesize into the matter of a life. The contour of these complex inner mappings are porous, constantly evolving; and while they inform our present reality, they remain spaces we alone inhabit. Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson and Katherina Olschbaur’s practices investigate these profound defining yet intangible markers, building scenic territories grounded in the unseen and the ungraspable. Refusing portraiture as a means for exegetic specificity, they explore painting as a conceptual device, an expanse from which one may express the essential, primal nucleus of their being.
For the first time in dialogue, these three combined bodies of work interrogate how figures can become vessels for broader inner quests. Olschbaur’s vibrant exploration of color and gesture, a push and pull in constant tension from which conflicting energies arise and fuse into new forms are vital incantations. Pairing quiet moments with an intense force of life and flow, they speak the world anew. Johnson‘s allusive scenes emerge from intertwined stratas of textures and washes to become concrete embodiments of emotions as memories. Excavating a feeling over a form, his pursuit lies in the ethereal evocation of the impalpable, an immersion in an architecture of carefully surveyed unspoken sensations. Groff’s bodies are drawing their viewer in close, seeking the effect of a relationship to a natural landscape they cannot fully control. Uneased in their own postures as if confronted to their unwilled and unwanted desires, they hint at our conflicting inner yearnings.
Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur offers room for figuration to exist, not as a representative device for the visual and the intelligible, but as an entry point for ethereal plains to materialize and unfold under their makers’ hands. Each artist’s approach, while inherently expressive and wildly singular, hints at the bigger mechanisms that inhabit us all, in deeply conspicuous ways. We are all made of generic disparate elements, textures and asperities which once compounded become entire universes. Samantha, Devin and Katherina seek to occupy the reify substance hidden in the interstices between the known and the felt, the defined and the unsaid. In doing so, they broaden the spectrum of what may, in fact, visually define us as beings.
— Anne-Laure Lemaitre
Samantha Joy Groff (b. 1993, Pennsylvania) received her MFA from Yale School of Art and earned a dual undergraduate degree from Parsons School of Design in integrated fashion design and film studies. Recent exhibitions include Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur, Nicodim, New York (2023); Dark Pastures, Half Gallery, Los Angeles (2023, solo); Samantha Joy Groff: True Riches, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2022, solo); Town Gossip, Martha’s Contemporary, Austin (2022, solo); Stilltsville, Half Gallery, Miami (2022); YOU ME ME YOU curated by Rachel Keller, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2022); Vibrant Matters, Jeffrey Deitch Gallery, New York (2022); Noise for Now x Phillips, Phillips Benefit Auction, New York (2022); Eve Presents #2, Eve Liebe Gallery, London (2022); Hunting Season, Adhesivo Contemporary, Mexico City (2021, solo); and Good Taste, Dinner Gallery, New York (2021).
Devin B. Johnson (b. 1992, Los Angeles) obtained his BA in Fine Arts from the California State University of Channel Islands (2015) and received a Masters of Fine Arts at Pratt Institute (2019). In addition to being named
a 2023 Artist-in-Residence for Fountainhead, Miami, he was selected as an Artsy Vanguard (2022), named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Art and Design (2022) list, was included in Cultured’s “Young Artists 2021,” and was one of sixteen artists from around the world selected for the inaugural year of the Black Rock Senegal residency (2020). His work is collected by Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Pond Society, Shanghai; the Rubell Museum, Miami; the Columbus Museum of Art; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai; and many others. Recent exhibitions include Devin B. Johnson, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2024, solo, forthcoming); Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur, Nicodim, New York (2023); Forms, Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch, Miami (2023); Five Walkscapes, Pond Society, Shanghai (2022, solo); Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest: 10 Years, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2023); PRESENT ‘23, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus (2023); Ritornellos, Nicoletti Contemporary, London (2023); MATERNITY LEAVE: NONE OF WOMEN BORN, Nicodim in collaboration with the Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas (2023); Joshua Hagler, Devin B. Johnson, Nicola Samorì, Hugo Wilson, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2023); Night Owl, Massimo de Carlo (2022); Dak’Art Biennial, Dakar, Senegal (2022); Between Ground and Sky, Nicodim, New York (2022); My Heart Cries, I Set Out an Offering for You, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2021, solo); Long Walk, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2021, solo); Melody of a Memory, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2020, solo); When You Waked Up the Buffalo, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2020); Hollywood Babylon: A Re-Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Jeffrey Deitch, Nicodim, AUTRE Magazine, Los Angeles (2020); Atmosphere of Certain Uncertainty, Residency Gallery, Inglewood (2019, solo); and Incognito, ICA LA, Los Angeles (2019).
Katherina Olschbaur (b.1983, Bregenz, Lake Constance, Austria) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She graduated from the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria. Recent exhibitions include Samantha Joy Groff, Devin B. Johnson, Katherina Olschbaur, Nicodim, New York (2023); October+, Perrotin, Paris (2023); Katherina Olschbaur, Dangxia Art Space, Beijing (solo); Galeria Nicodim: 10 years, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2023); Midnight Spill, Perrotin, Hong Kong (2023, solo); Somatic Markings, Kasmin, New York (2022); Prayers, Divinations, Nicodim, New York (2022, solo); Dak’Art: African Contemporary Art Biennale, Dakar (2022); Live Flesh, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2021–2022, solo); Dominique Fung and Katherina Olschbaur: My Kingdom and a Horse, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2021, two-artist); Night Blessings, Union Pacific, London (2021, solo), Tortured Ecstasies, Nicodim Upstairs, Los Angeles (2020, solo); Dirty Elements, Contemporary Arts Center Gallery, UC Irvine, Irvine (2020, solo); Hollywood Babylon: A Re-inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Jeffrey Deitch, Nicodim, AUTRE Magazine, Los Angeles (2020); The Divine Hermaphrodite, GNYP Gallery, Berlin (2019, solo); and Horses, Nicodim, Los Angeles (2018, solo). In 2021, she was selected for the second year of Kehinde Wiley’s Black Rock residency in Dakar, Senegal.
