Mark Johnsen

My print-based practice investigates how slowed-down methods of looking and collecting contrast with the immediacy and overstimulation of our fast-paced era. A lifetime of skateboarding has trained my eye to be hyper-aware of unexpected hazards, obstacles, and the physical matter beneath my feet. I look for alternative potentials in the layered histories of the places I traverse while acknowledging the impacts and erasures ensuing from the colonial shaping of these spaces.

My work combines multiple print media techniques to build new/seemingly impossible images, formed by chance and iteration, and an informal collaboration with the printing press. Shifting in focus between aerial and first-person perspective, I implement photographic and drawn images ranging from micro and macro vantage points attempting to complicate the perception of pictorial space. I draw from the traditional and historical context of printmaking and rely on combining its many processes to create monoprints and monotypes, challenging the typical edition associated with printmaking.

I am proposing to exhibit a print or series of prints inspired by the idiom “worn-out welcome,” a phrase that generally carries a negative connotation of overstaying one's visit. In relation to the theme of Plasticity, I seek to reclaim this phrase in a positive context—as an homage to physical interaction in an age increasingly shaped by digital media and satellite communication. The prints I am submitting for this call are created by directly inking used welcome mats, transferring their impression onto lithographic stones, and printed onto paper substrates.

I am proposing to present these works flat on the ground, laid over brick pavers to function as landmarks within the exhibition space. The work or works could also be displayed on the wall, framed or floating. The prints embody a shift in materiality, transforming three-dimensional, rubber and fibre surfaces onto delicate impressions on paper, marked and ruptured by the force of bodily presence. These timeworn invitations portray a history of encounters and, most importantly, a welcome.