Devin B Johnson // The Atmosphere of Certain Uncertainty
September 21st - November 16th, 2019
The work presented in The Atmosphere of Certain Uncertainty was created in response to Frantz Fanon’s 1952 novel “Black Skin White Masks”, in which Fanon attempts to break down and conceptualize the contemporary black male psyche. Johnson metaphorically reinterprets the “white mask” as white socks that serves as a reminder of that assimilation we walk into everyday just as much as the mask, as implied by Fanon.
Artist’s NotesI wasn’t aware of my blackness until someone told me that I was different. For me, the contrast of white against black skin speaks to a type double consciousness we navigate through everyday. In the series “White Nike Socks on Black Skin”, I simply wanted to attach these concepts and ideas to a classic LA convention such as slides and socks. The bodies present in the work are always a non- violent body, a body that just wants to simply be. 
Installation Images
About the Artist
Devin B Johnson
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). He was selected for Forbes 30 Under 30 Art and Design (2022), 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 the Columbus Museum of Art; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Pond Society, Shanghai; the Rubell Museum, Miami; and many others. Recent exhibitions include Between Ground and Sky, Nicodim, New York (2022), My Heart Cries, I Set Out an Offering for You, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2021, solo); Long Walk, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest (2021, solo); Melody of a Memory, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2020, solo); When You Waked Up the Buffalo, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); Hollywood Babylon: A Re-Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Jeffrey Deitch, Nicodim Gallery, AUTRE Magazine, Los Angeles (2020); Atmosphere of Certain Uncertainty, Residency Gallery, Inglewood (2019, solo); and Incognito, ICA LA, Los Angeles (2019).
Gallery Annex Project
About the artist
Lou’s artistic practice is steeped in photography, sculpture, audio, and colour grading. Her work is at the intersection of ancestral memory, community and inheritance. She studies the existence of folk as branches without roots, and how that makes things come round in queer ways. Lou’s work has been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego and Residency Art Gallery in Inglewood, CA among others. She is a graduate of the School of Arts and Architecture at the University of California, Los Angeles.
About the project
Using her family’s archive as a point of departure, Kya Lou seeks to expose the flesh of an image. Using collage, Lou bears witness to the ways photography can produce frequencies that are felt rather than heard.
