#john bohl

[wildflowerbaltimore]

Escape Room

November 2nd, 2024

Presented by Wild Flower

Mount Vernon, Baltimore

Jane Balfus, John Bohl, Michael Bussell, Jim Spindle, Ian Swanson, Luhhfella

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I'm still intoxicated from drinking too much last night. The room I gather myself in isn't the same room I've been in, but it's the room other people have gone into before. The memories of the other people are stored externally within the room, and I have to figure out how to make sense of them even though none of them have anything directly to do with me. What is helpful is that I am interested in other people and their feelings about the world. At least one person works to make sure the externalized memories of the other people are kept in workable condition in this room, but they aren't here right now. Nobody can directly help me. The room is supposed to be neutral to allow for the externalized memories of the other people to remain the focal point, but I'm still intoxicated from drinking too much last night, so I can't really focus on them that well. Also this room has a bunch of discarded objects in it as well which can distract me or at least instill within me a particular atmosphere in and of itself. I can become skeptical about my own abilities to differentiate between externalized memories of other people and discarded objects. Even if the other people didn't directly enter the room before me to form the memories that they externalized within the room, their presence still interacted with this room before I found myself within it. Sometimes my memories of similar rooms that I've found myself within before interact with my experience of this room, which I can decide to either inform my understanding of my experience or to block its muddying influence. Either way I have to use what I know and what I can teach myself with the externalized memories of other people within this room in order to solve for my being in the room and leave it. In my leave of the room, if I can say that I ever truly leave the room, I will come to a fuller understanding of myself and of the people who entered the room either physically or otherwise before me.

text by Anastasios Karnazes

[wildflowerbaltimore]

[wildflowerbaltimore]

John Bohl

Raking

2024

22 x 18"

Acrylic on canvas

[wildflowerbaltimore]

John Bohl

Watch

2024

16 x 12"

Acrylic on canvas

[wildflowerbaltimore]

Jane Balfus (b. 1998, Los Angeles) lives and works in New York. Balfus is an installation based artist. Much of her recent work, spanning animation, video, drawings, and text, grapples with themes of girlhood and invisible illness. Balfus’s recent exhibition, American Girl Diagnostics, premiered at Mery Gates in 2023. Previous group exhibitions include Public Works Administration (2023), Romance Info (2023), Sara’s (2023), A+E Lab (2022), O'Flaherty's (2022), Mcg21xoxo (2021), Alyssa Davis Gallery (2020), and Lubov (2019).

John Bohl graduated with a BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art and currently lives and works in Baltimore. Recent exhibitions include "Green" at Headstone Gallery (Kingston, NY) and "Balancing Acts" at the Peale Museum (Baltimore, MD). He has also produced a variety of prints and publications with Beach Press in London and Oso Press in Los Angeles. Escape Room is Bohl’s second presentation with Wild Flower, following his two-person show with anonymous, A Place before A Name, in 2016. 

Michael Bussell received a BFA in Photography from Maryland Institute College of Art. His output has been exhibited internationally over the past decade, including in solo exhibitions at Plague Space, Krasnodar, RU (2022), Deli Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2015) and group shows at Marvin Gardens, Brooklyn, NY (2024), Triest, Brooklyn, NY (2021), New Scenario, Pripyat, UA and online (2021) and Interstate Projects, Brooklyn, NY (2019). In 2016 he founded the curatorial platform Wild Flower which situates art in Baltimore’s Leakin Park for dissemination online. It has also co-produced the projects Vent Space (2020-2021), My New Bed (2019) and Escape Room (2024). 

Jim Spindle’s works include Little Fellow, a PFP collection on the Solana blockchain, and Pil Goger Bum Dum, an open edition animated GIF presented by Yeche Lange on Lens Protocol.  Previously, Spindle was a Crane Operator for Tojiba CPU Corp, and a hobbyist woodturner.  This is Spindle’s first IRL presentation, a physical extension of the Little Fellow project.

Ian Swanson (b. 1983, Detroit, MI) attended Wayne State University and Pratt Institute. Most recently, his work has been the subject of solo and two-person presentations at Materia Gallery, Detroit, MI (2024), Plague Space, Krasnodar, RU (2023), Catbox Contemporary, Ridgewood, NY (2020); ASHES/ASHES, New York and Los Angeles (2019 and 2016); Hot Wheels Projects, Athens (2019); MX Gallery, New York (2018); As it Stands, Los Angeles (2017); Jack Barrett Gallery, New York (2017); and Simone DeSousa Gallery, Detroit (2016). Swanson has participated in notable group exhibitions, including Chernobyl Papers, Pripyat, UA, and online (2021); Dark Mode, ASHES/ASHES, New York (2019); and Peekskill Project V, Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY (2012). In 2022, a review of Swanson’s work appeared in the anthology Human Rights, published by Amphetamine Sulphate. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including i-D, Art Viewer, Coeval, and New American Paintings. Swanson currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Luhhfella avoids the typical artist's struggle for subject, focusing on Mifella—a derivative of the NFT collection Milady that faced rejection, leading to outsider status and birthing the Fellaverse. His work is about being a Fella, staying seated, painting endless formations of Fellas, and knowing that the very limits of what a Fella can be are still beyond our present understanding. Luhhfella embraces NFTs' derivative nature, trusting an egregoric subject to plot its own course. The Fellaverse is an immersive, slow unfolding—no grand narratives, no explanations, just Fellas. It is what it is. Luhhfella is most active on Twitter @luhhfella, where he consistently posts his video and image-based work. He has released three NFT collections on Solana: Wickz, LFVAD2K24, and Chucks.

Anastasios Karnazes is the author of Rainbow Sonnets 20 (The Song Cave) and the editor of Theaphora.

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[wildflowerbaltimore]

John Bohl with anonymous

A Place Before a Name

July 18th, 2016

A You are standing in a forest… NORTH is a moss covered stone staircase. > look at staircase A You feel in the pit of your stomach that you have trespassed. >north A You walk up the stairs. There are the ruins of a small structure. WEST is the front door. >west A As you turn the corner, in your periphery, you see a figure inside. They appear to paint a canvas laid against the dilapidated wall. When you stand in the empty door frame you see no one. A painting rests on the wall. NORTH is the painting. >north A You approach the painting. It lifts itself up hurriedly and settles blocking the right window. A light crawls out from beneath the soggy chimney. More things follow, pouring themselves outward. >look at the light A You stare into the light and begin to lose consciousness. In your mind you hear a voice speaking calmly. It says, enunciating emphatically… “Objects are not permanent as they appear. Piaget told us how hard it is for humans to learn to accept this illusion as infants. Things are coming together and breaking apart at the same time, unendingly. Being meat, you mustn’t like to dwell on this fact for too long.” You awake feeling rested. The lights and objects have gone. Your final score was 185,600.