Room to Play

From the publisher: "Simen Johan creates surreal and narrative tableaux of corrupted youth. His images of children and adolescents are constructed by digitally manipulating and combining parts of faces and bodies belonging to people of various ethnicities, ages, and genders. His fictional identities are depicted in equally fabricated scenarios that are replete with references to both the art historical tradition and Freudian sexuality. The poster-perfect finish of his prints belies the disturbing nature of their content; a pubescent girl hula hoops against an idyllic seaside backdrop, as the hoop leaves bruises on her waist; an androgynous teenager cradles the head of a dead sheep on which flies are beginning to land." From Simen Johan: "My photographs are composites of multiple-image fragments that I digitally manipulate and combine, including both images that I have photographed myself and found images. By combining different elements, my objective is to create artificial scenarios that appear vaguely familiar and produce numerous associations. I want to evoke a sense of familiarity that will seduce the viewer into allowing his or her own experience, imagination, and understanding of existing popular imagery to become tools for interpreting my work."