Look at "Stage Set. Munster, IN," used for a reenactment of the Stations of the Cross. It's a stone prison, with iron bars in the window and door, luridly splashed with blood-red paint. Orange cables, a worker's lamp, and a smoke machine surround it.
In "Screens. Louisville, KY," a giant, menacing, inverted black dome housing several plasma screens hangs godlike over the tiny seats below; Johnson shot the image from high in the upper tiers.
He captured "Bolt. Fort Wayne, IN" from below; a video camera stands in for a heroic or saintly figure gazing upward as lightning flies across the ceiling.
Churchly theatricality goes back at least as far as the creation of gothic cathedrals; Johnson captures the latest high-tech iteration. But he presents it nakedly, with electrical cords and control panels, in a way that calls out the ministers and their stage managers for manufacturing spectacles designed to trigger ecstatic responses in their congregants, rather than making quiet spaces for prayerful contemplation.
A pleasing visual shock
Daniel Heidkamp's aptly titled show "The Arrangement" at LaMontagne Gallery focuses on compositions of color, pattern, and form. Hot, buzzy tones rub against one another and set off retinal sparks; punchy patterns agitate the paintings. The result is a pleasing, aggressive, visual shock. Oh, and he's actually painting people, which gives the paintings added layers of character and narrative, but these seem secondary to the sock in the eye delivered by the arrangements themselves.
The slope-shouldered slackers in "Astoria (Bikes)" stand in a blankly orange space, defined only by a zebra-stripe crosswalk and cars floating behind them. They wear Hawaiian and camouflage shirts. Their bikes cast red shadows; skin tones range from creamy pink to garish yellow-orange. The punky tones grab at you and push you away.
