Geary is pleased to present Johannah Herr's Redaction Order in Gallery 2. In Herr’s first exhibition with Geary she presents a larger-than-life facsimile of Redaction Order #13767, a 5-page executive order from the desk of President Donald Trump.
Using a myriad of different vinyls cut into idiosyncratic scribbles, Redaction Order 13767 creates a redaction poem of Executive Order #13767 (Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements) to create an alternative narrative. By omitting the majority of the text in the original order, the redaction is both an assertion of resistance to the anti-immigration policies and xenophobic attitudes propagated by the Trump administration, and a cathartically hopeful exercise of a how re-imagined policy might actually strive to create equity.
Building from a lineage of WWII nautical Dazzle camouflage, the practice employed by the U.S. military in which naval ships were painted in striking geometric patterns to throw off enemy tracking, Herr's practice employs dizzying patterns and color as strategy for subversion. Her maximalist, saturated visuals operate as both a tool for audience seduction, and as a metaphor for the dazzling effect of dominant ideology and consumerism.
Johannah Herr holds an MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2016) and a BFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design (2009). She has had solo shows at BRIC, Elijah Wheat Showroom and Envoy Enterprises (all New York City), Red Ger Gallery (Ulaabaatar, Mongolia) and Galeri Metropol (Tallinn, Estonia) and been featured in group shows at Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY), Visual Arts Center of New Jersey (Summit, NJ), Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw, Poland) and DADAPost (Berlin). She is a Fulbright Scholar (Mongolia) and has attended residencies at SIM (Reykjavik, Iceland), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), IEA’s Experimental Projects Residency (Alfred, NY), Oxbow Artists Residency (Saugatuk, MI), the Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY) and Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT). Herr is also an upcoming resident at the Arctic Circle Residency (Svalbard, International Territory). She currently teaches at Parsons School of Design as well as New York University and is additionally the Co-Founder of Daughters Rising, an anti-human trafficking, indigenous women’s empowerment NGO based in Mae Wang, Thailand. She lives and works between Brooklyn and Mae Wang. In January 2020, Geary will exhibit Herr's work in a solo presentation at Untitled San Francisco.