Youri Johnson develops immersive narratives that blend ritualistic materials and symbolic objects, forming evocative installations and sculptures. Through text, sculpture, and found objects, he weaves layered compositions that function like subtle spells, revealing hidden networks of belief, memory, and power. His work draws from a broad constellation of influences, including mythology, esotericism, and vernacular knowledge. Everyday materials—keys, knives, stones, candles—are transformed into enigmatic objects that seem to carry their own logic and intention. These forms function as thresholds between the intimate and the collective, the physical and the metaphysical. Writing is central to Johnson’s process, not as explanation but as extension. His poems and theoretical fragments operate in parallel with the sculptural, building a vocabulary that is intuitive, elliptical, and emotionally resonant. Through this interplay of word and object, he constructs subtle, destabilizing narratives that challenge rational structures and invite other modes of knowing. Johnson’s practice is grounded in a sensitivity to presence, gesture, and symbolic resonance. His work resists spectacle, opting instead for accumulation, detail, and the transformative potential of small things—a practice of fiction as resistance, and art as quiet alchemy. ...
