Joe Johnson’s photographic project Mega Churches is currently on view at Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston SC.  The mega church, which can be found throughout the United States, hosts a large congregation of 2,000+ evangelical worshipers and a production of often-televised religious spectacle.  It is a highly relevant subject for the contemporary visual artist to explore as the literal Biblical interpretations such mega churches typically preach influence the US socially and politically.

Johnson maintains a formal distance in his photographic series, Mega Churches, through choosing to capture these vast interior spaces in a state of absence and quiet; in doing so, he avoids human representation that could potentially veer into caricature.  In Johnson’s words, the ‘mechanics of faith’ are his focus in these photographs.  The artist hones in on the rows of seats, acrid neon and fluorescent lighting, corporate decor, theatrical stage sets, large-scale screens and behind-the-scenes computers and wires that define and facilitate the business of worship in the mega church’s arena-like space.

Today’s fundamentalist Christian mega churches appropriate entertainment technology and theatrical production to capture their audiences’ attention – and more sardonically, their pocketbooks.  Through Johnson’s visual emphasis upon the creation of artifice, the artist is perhaps commenting on the insincerity and fallacy of the message these mega spaces serve to convey.

Joe Johnson earned his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and his MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, both in photography.  Johnson’s photographic work has been shown throughout the United States in both solo and group exhibitions.  Johnson is an assistant professor of photography at the University of Missouri and a member of the Midwest Photographers Project at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

Johnson’s Mega Churches series has been well received in the US – earning the artist runner up recognition for the 2008 Aperture Portfolio Prize.  The series was previously shown at the Gallery Kayafas in Boston MA from April through May 2009.

Mega Churches remains at Redux Contemporary Art Center through 18 December 2009.

Over the past forty five days, Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, South Carolina has exhibited new paintings by Matt Phillips and Josef Kristofoletti, in a show titled the The Sun Machine Is Coming Down. The exhibition uses the language of geometric abstraction to discuss scientific processes, phenomenological experiences, and the nature of illusion.

The artists, who met in graduate school at Boston University, push the boundaries of pattern, color and space, synthesizing these elements into a formal system of painting which examines the basic building blocks of matter. In an attempt to better understand the world around us, Josef Kristofoletti focused his attention on the CERN particle accelerator, the world’s largest and most expensive laboratory for particle physics. While CERN was preparing for its first ever successful collision, Kristofoletti was creating The Angel of the Higgs Boson, a large-scale painting of a cross section of the CERN accelerator on the outside walls of Redux. The end result was a strikingly bright mural that furthered the dialogue about scale, the tradition of public mural painting and scientific theory. Kristofoletti is currently a part of the mobile living experiment Transit Antenna, offering him the opportunity to create murals across the U.S.

Inside Redux, are the encompassing paintings of Matt Phillips. Phillips paintings go far beyond the modernist ideals from which they are built. They attempt to simulate situations that speak about the phenomena of deep space, energy transfer and optical illusion. Some of the paintings in the gallery reach 16 ft. in length, and incorporate paint with collage, sewn surfaces and irregularly shaped canvases. Since completing his MFA at BU, Matt Phillips has completed an exhibition with Petra Projects hosted at Mehr Gallery in NYC as well participated in Gangbusters at Plane Space Gallery, also in NYC. The artist currently teaches painting at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.

The exhibition, which was curated by DailyServing.com Founder, Seth Curcio, is accompanied with a full color, 50 page catalog documenting the exhibition, including special articles and essays about the artists’ work. A limited edition catalog release event is scheduled for today at Redux and the book will be available for purchase on the DailyServing.com site by the end of next week.