Johnny Abrahams, based in New York, is a painter who creates extremely fascinating illusions with nothing but lines. We admire the patience it must take to create these graphic paintings!
Abrahams uses only minimal colour and visual elements in his work, yet we love how the final paintings are complex and disorient our gaze. The destabilization within Abrahams' work is created through the simple and effective interactions of lines. The consistent and repeated lines creates the illusion of form on the surface of the paintings, as well as unifying them as a complete body of work. The interaction of the contrasting light and dark lines and forms compete simultaneously for our attention and create a wonderful visual shimmer. Also, Abrahams does not limit himself to a square canvas. His paintings come in odd shapes that are unusual yet logical because they complete the illusions that sit on their surfaces. We love how his painted lines are so clean and crisp that they could be computer generated.
When speaking about his work, Abrahams stated, "beginning each piece with a grid, I can either express that structure or divide it into smaller, increasingly intricate geometries to form a progressively finer language of elements." It is this intricacy in Johnny Abrahams' paintings that both impresses us and makes his illusions so amazingly convincing.
