Auxier Kline is pleased to announce the opening of I Want to Believe, a solo exhibition of new paintings by the New York based artist Brandon Elijah Johnson.

The title of the exhibition, I Want to Believe, is a reference to the television series the X-files. The phrase appears on a UFO poster in the character Agent Mulder’s office, and acts as a sort of mantra for the character to retain a sense of hope in the face of doubt, vulnerability, and fear. Johnson borrows the phrase as the overarching thesis for the body of work included in the exhibition. The X-Files is directly referenced in the painting Fieldwork, which is a portrait of the two lead characters in their work attire as they investigate paranormal activity in nature.

The subjects of Johnson’s paintings emerge from an accumulation of visual material: images appropriated from popular culture, film and television, the music industry, art history, as well as snapshots captured from his lived experience. These sources become the basis for scenes that are familiar yet distinctly transformed by the artist’s hand. In this body of work, the artist walks the line between the present and the past. While the paintings depict recent contemporary life, they don’t depict imagery of modern technology, instead embracing timeless themes such as the natural world, the supernatural, the religious, and the musical, infusing them with a sense of nostalgia.

Johnson’s subjects are filtered through imagination and reconfigured through an intuitive, often mischievous approach to image-making. The resulting works occupy an uncertain territory between invention and observation, personal experience and shared imagery. In this space, individual moments become fragments of a broader visual history, offering glimpses into the memories and cultural references that we collectively carry.

Brandon Elijah Johnson (b. 1992, Seattle, Washington) is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2015. His work has been exhibited in galleries across the United States. I Want to Believe is his first solo exhibition with Auxier Kline.