M. Scott Johnson – Bio

Biography

M. Scott Johnson (American, b. 1968) is a sculptor who cuts time open. His practice is not only an engagement with stone, but an insistence on the fugitivity of form—where material is sound, where chiseling is a form of drumming, and where sculpture becomes a vessel for the ancestral and the not-yet-seen. To speak of Johnson is to speak of one of the most adept sculptors of his generation, a maker who returns direct carving to its Black American urgency, reanimating intuition and memory as modes of critique. His work draws myth, ritual, and post-colonial fracture into the mineral body, revealing sculpture as a site where silence is not absence, but resonance.

Johnson’s passage into this practice was sharpened through his apprenticeship with Nicholas Mukomberanwa (1940–2002), the Zimbabwean sculptor and national hero, from 1996 to 1999. Under Mukomberanwa, Johnson absorbed a language of touch where stone was less medium than interlocutor, less surface than archive. This training was not a mere technical formation but a ceremonial induction into the Shona continuum of carving, extended into the improvisational urgency of Black America. Out of this nexus comes a body of work in which stone itself seems to breathe, to hesitate, to move fugitive.

Born and raised in Inkster, Michigan, Johnson came of age in the sonic laboratory of Detroit techno—a site where Black futurity learned to inhabit circuitry, loop, and pulse. That machinic rhythm permeates his sculptural vocabulary, as syncopation and repetition are transposed into line, cut, and void. His sculptures embody what might be called an Afrosurrealist materialism: objects that emerge from atavistic memory but feel like fragments of a dream projected into matter. Like Afrosurrealist writing and film, Johnson’s carving bends reality into myth, staging a refusal of the ordinary. His stone forms are simultaneously ritual artifacts and speculative instruments, collapsing the distance between ancestral invocation and futuristic speculation.

Johnson’s work has entered and disturbed the spaces of permanence: the collections of Hampton University Museum (VA), Kenkeleba House (NY), the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NY), and the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway. His exhibitions map the diaspora’s fugitive routes: Columbia University (NY); the Embassy of the Republic of Ghana (D.C.); Galerie Myrtis (MD); Harvard University; Hampton University Museum (VA); Kenkeleba House (NY); Fabric Projects Gallery (Los Angeles); United Talent Agency ArtSpace (Los Angeles); Wilber Jennings Gallery (NY); TransAfrica Forum; the National Gallery of Zimbabwe; Grey Gallery at New York University; the Museum of Contemporary Diasporan Art (Brooklyn, NY); Rush Arts Gallery (NY); the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (NY); the New York Botanical Gardens; Tafaria Castle & Center for the Arts (Nyeri, Kenya); the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History (MI); JELMA Museum at Morgan State University; the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History; the 13th Havana Biennale at Galeria Carmen Montilla, Cuba; and the 59th Venice Biennale Personal Structures: Time, Space and Existence at Palazzo Bembo. Each exhibition is less a placement than an unfolding: his objects act as portals, uncanny in their stillness, charged with a rhythm you almost hear.

Since 2002, Johnson has been an artist-in-residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where pedagogy becomes sculpture, and youth become collaborators in an intergenerational installation. His public exhibitions with Black youth have appeared across New York City: at the Williamsburg Historical Society, Bronx Historical Society, Cork Gallery in Lincoln Center, and The Town Hall. This work extends the Afrosurrealist ethos into education itself, producing not only objects but collectives, not only forms but futures.

In Johnson’s hands, stone refuses silence, articulating memory through form, carrying ancestral weight while pressing forward into new futures of Black expression.

M. Scott Johnson-Statement

Statement

When shaping the stone I rely on the extremely physical process of direct carving, coupled with experimentation in natural and artificial lighting. In my most recent sculptures organic pigments are integrated to exploit symmetry and to empower their aesthetic integrity. I achieve the most visceral and focused statements through improvisation.

Improvisation allows me to snatch an image at birth, creating a balance between imposing and communicating with the natural life force resonating from within my materials. Line, configuration, texture and title are all combined to allow the spectator to respond both consciously and subconsciously.

My series, “Shadow Matter” is the inter-dimensional reflection of matter from the physical world – the space within space. Observing shadow matter, or negative space, gives us a truer understanding of the life and death forces of all objects. I believe atavism (bio-cultural memory) opens up the compendium of human knowledge and guides us through negative space. It makes us aware of the harmonies and vibrations of the darkness. Understanding these mysterious syntaxes, we can shape the void and harness the creative rhythm of these alter-realities.

My visual experimentation with rhythm of structure, repetition of pattern, light management, and the abstract organic has allowed me to peer into ways in which these forces influence my unconscious mind.

Shadow Matter Entity 2, 2008, Rhyolite w/Grout, 13″ x 25″ x 13″

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Landscape Astrophotography

When working in the expression of landscape Astrophotography, I am constantly searching for ways in which to navigate/interpret light, space and soul. Humbled by the vastness of the cosmos, when I compose an image I seek to explore the limits and promise of my own physical mortality.

Capturing these images must be done with precise preparation, knowledge and trust of intuition. My background as a stone sculpture has trained my both my inner and outer eye to recognize the sacred geometry that exist throughout the universe. Still, often the utmost factor contributing to an outstanding image is the random gift of revelation from the subject itself. My prime inspiration behind this work is the opportunity to decipher the intellect of the galaxy, and express my devotion to the infinite.

The photographic series Venus Rising, represents a yearly pilgrimage to the dark sky of New York’s Adirondack park, there I record the rising of the planet Venus in the Northern Hemisphere. Venus goes through two phases. For 250 days the planet is known as the “Evening Star” as it follows the setting sun. After the Evening Star phase, Venus disappears for eight days before returning as the “Morning Star”. Like many of the ancients, for me visually, this is a celestial affirmation of rebirth, balance and immortality.

Venus Rising #1, 2015, Adirondack National Park, New York
Infrared photo printed on Canson Infinity Premium RC, 24″ x 14″

M. Scott Johnson

M. Scott Johnson (b. 1968, Inkster, Michigan) is a New York City‐based artist and educator, has carved out a legacy as one of the most stimulating and unique artists of his generation. M. Scott has explored, both in his practice and through his 20‐year visual arts teaching residency at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, New York, a rich vision of contemporary Afro‐aesthetics.

Museum Collections
The Hampton University Museum
The Schomburg Center Research in Black Culture
Embassy of Oslo Norway, Arts in Embassies Program

Deodate (High John as a infant), 2022
Exhibited at the 2022 Venice Biennial
31 x 11 x 18 ″
Springstone
70lbs without base