Bentley University RSM Gallery To Debut New Exhibit Later This Month

WALTHAM, MA — The RSM Gallery is set to premiere paintings from "A River Twice", a ten-year project responding to the Massachusetts Mystic River Landscape that Bradford Johnson began in 2020 and will complete in 2030.

This exhibit is set to open on Jan. 25 and run through Feb. 26 at the gallery. An opening night artist talk and reception is scheduled at 5 p.m. on Jan. 25.

Gallery officials said the works "wrestle with the anxiety that many of us feel living in the Anthropocene."

They continued:

"Today we are flooded with artistic and documentary works showing the devastation that humans have inflicted on the environment. They are all about endings: extinction, apocalypse, collapse. Johnson’s work takes a longer view. He revisits landscapes that have been continuously altered by humans over decades, even centuries, and shows the surprising ways in which they continue to evolve. He unearths multiple layers of human engagement with a place, from consumption and trade to myth, ritual, and restoration. Johnson’s artwork incorporates site visits with photographs and archival documents acknowledging Anthropogenic ecological damage, while testifying to the habitat rehabilitation work of scientists and activists. In this process, he forces us to imagine humans not only as agents of destruction, but also of renewal."

Johnson has displayed work at solo exhibitions in galleries across the state and beyond.

In 2017, Johnson exhibited "Year of the Monster" at Barrington Gallery Gordon College, which followed his 2015 exhibit, "Bodies in the River", at the John Walford Galleries at Wheaton College in Illinois.