Dari Johnson is a painter from Detroit, now based in Brooklyn, whose work begins with a question: how little information can an image hold before someone starts finding meaning in it?

He builds each canvas by hand, treating the surface as part of that investigation rather than simply a place to paint. Layers of gesso are built up and sanded back until the surface is quiet enough for small shifts in shape, texture, and absence to matter. His paintings develop through brushed layers of paint, with black, gray, and exposed canvas. Forms blur, overlap, and disappear, suggesting bodies, objects, or fragments of a scene without becoming any of them.

Johnson is interested in how much to give and how much to withhold. A shape, title, memory, or piece of information can make something feel recognizable, while less context leaves room for experience to enter. He’s interested in that threshold, where an image offers enough to begin a thought without deciding where it should end.

At GlogauAIR, Johnson extends this interest in context into the materials by collecting discarded wood around Berlin. Each piece carries a history he cannot know. By bringing this uncertainty/mystery into the work, he considers how knowing where something came from changes what is already in front of us.