Mirror The Fool
Brian Sharrock
4.04 — 5.24
[Gallery A]
In Mirror the Fool, Brian Sharrock presents us with a suite of beautifully framed embroidered works. On their face, they’re evocative of familiar artifacts—a Rorschach test, a Magic Eye—but they unfold to become more elusive, gentler, more open, illustrating an evolution Sharrock himself has taken, wandering away from the more literal representations found in his past work, into a newer, undecided idea. The indecision is the intent. Brian has known how to be precise. With these works, though, he has committed to using that precision to explore what cannot be fully articulated, measured, complete. We get the feeling, as viewers, that we are working together with Brian to make sense of what we’re looking at.
Sometimes, you can imagine you are under a piece, staring up at it through branches. Otherwise, you are suspended above one, almost in peril of free-falling into its hypnotic vortex pattern. Each piece is provided with a frame—their only consistent boundary—that physically and psychically contain the images. The containment plays against itself, of course; the existence of the frames and the naturalistic inlays—at turns concretely mimicking webs, at times suggesting errant wisps of aerial roots—implies a space beyond the frame, allowing each piece to be a full world in itself, or a snapshot of a boundless dimension. The fool in this case may be anyone trying to square the divergent mediums; rather, their relationship is bound in their mutual undoing of the other, their graceful marriage of delicate execution and playful exploration.
After all, each piece is transformed multiple times over—drawn, transposed, sewn, framed—in a process of careful creation and metamorphosis, of losing and regaining oneself, as each refracted state presents itself anew. Then, there is the place each medium occurs, and how the realities of Brian’s life exist in these pieces. The precision and methodical habits required of a woodshop, pressed up against the intuitive and romantic elements of what a domestic life and craft call for. The pieces exist across these realities, they are borne from both physical representations of the dual labors into which Brian pours himself. One imagines that Brian and his works are at home in multiple worlds: at home in a gallery, at home in nature, at home at home. With these works, Brian is asking us all a question, and accepting that we may each have heard it differently; he welcomes all our answers.
- Frances Jin
Brian Sharrock (b. 1988, Columbus, OH) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Blending carpentry and embroidery, he creates sculptural wall works that embody a blip on the map of imagination — representations of sights unseen, characterized by thread, not unlike visions in the clouds.
Drawing from views that traverse the vast pull of the universe, his work explores the interplay of micro and macro symbology. The resulting forms suggest a static-like resemblance to the world or oneself, capturing fleeting impressions that shift and evolve with the viewer’s gaze.
Smoke Glass Mud Grass
Tim Johnson
4.04 — 5.24
[Gallery B]
Walking into the vacation cabin with family in the North Country, we settle in after a long drive–one decorated by wholesome moments and subtle tensions. The sharp scent of pine and cedar saturates the air, mingling with kitschy maximalism in a bombardment to our senses. The abundance of triple comfort is both inviting and excessive, a lived-in nostalgia that feels at once curated and coincidental.
I hang my shorty’s hoodie on a homemade coat rack—crafted with love from leftover clothespins and an old cutting board, likely by someone’s aunty—and in this small gesture, I am drawn deeper into the quiet possibilities of connection. It’s a reminder that objects, no matter how humble, carry the imprint of those who shaped them, repurposed them, made them matter.
Tim Johnson’s practice engages with this same recognition of tactile memory through the reconfiguration of found materials. Remnants of domesticity—racks, chairs, beds—are reclaimed through the work; fragments of familiarity plucked from thrift stores, estate sales, and rural roadside curbs; where yesterday’s prized possessions now linger as the detritus of shifting eras. Like Duchamp’s readymades, these objects are lifted from their intended function and reassigned to a new purpose, but rather than detachment or irony, Tim leans into warmth, humor, and a sense of play.
Detroit: a city built on industry, mass production, and the factory floor, has long been a hub for furniture-making—its legacy evident in the sleek lines of mid-century modern design that once filled showrooms and office spaces. But Tim’s work stands in opposition to that kind of refinement. His pieces aren’t the polished, elegant forms of Eames chairs or Knoll credenzas; they are clunky, wonky, and deeply human—built with the same tenderness as a handmade quilt or a whittled toy. These works don’t whisper sophistication; they shout improvisation, care, and the joy of making do.
Flattened and recontextualized, his pieces become wall-bound works, existing in a space that tethers itself between outsider art and an instinctual, almost naive approach to making. The materials—crayons, discarded furniture, makeshift assemblages—echo a resourcefulness both genuine and urgent, as if each piece carries the residue of an era where nothing was wasted, only repurposed.
Tim’s approach to making follows the perfect setup for a joke—the right combination of familiarity, timing, and an unexpected turn. But the punchline lands somewhere deeper, revealing the quiet mechanics of an industry of making that thrives in the spaces between art and utility, nostalgia and critique. His works exist in the tension of that moment—the humor of recognition, the weight of reinvention.
-James McDevitt-Stredney
Tim Johnson (b. 1988, Chicago, IL) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Detroit, MI. His practice explores memory and its relationship to found objects, presenting an uncanny world shaped by his personal connection to the everyday. Johnson earned his BFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2012. His recent exhibitions include Speed Bump at No Place, Columbus (2023); Tranquilizer at A.D. Gallery, New York (2021); The Housewarming at Dominic Palarchio, Detroit (2019); Correlation at Sergi Vutuc, Chicago (2014); and Shaking Peter in Indianapolis (2015).
Tim Johnson’s latest body of work expands on his explorations of nostalgia, delving deeper into the intersection of personal and societal experience. His sculptures transform the comfort and familiarity of domestic objects—bed frames, wooden railings, crayons—into echoes of larger structures: factories, fields, houses, and smokestacks.
Rooted in his Midwestern heritage, Johnson’s work is shaped not only by the materials he sources—often from thrift stores and surplus depots in his home city of Detroit—but also by the themes they evoke. His palette of industrial greys and blues, contrasted with earthy browns, reds, and greens, reflects the duality of the Midwest: the lush farmland set against the grit of an industrial landscape.
Rather than subverting this heritage, Johnson embraces it. His sculptures fit within the aesthetic of a family home, incorporating familiar motifs—carved hearts, landscape imagery, and traditional woodworking—while recontextualizing them into abstract forms. The result is something both entirely new and deeply familiar, resonating with the essence of a Midwestern past reimagined in the present.