AND GAZELLES? AND GAZELLES: Titled in the manner of a “call and response,” this 2008 4.3 by 14.5 inch digital print on archival paper, image is one of a series that will feature in “Call and Response,” an exhibition of digital collages by Andrew Ellis Johnson opening at the Bernstein Gallery Saturday, December 13. The show runs through January 29 and there will be a public reception for the artist on Friday, December 19, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The Bernstein Gallery is located in Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. (Image Courtesy of the Bernstein Gallery)

“Call and Response,” an exhibition of digital collages by Andrew Ellis Johnson opens at the Bernstein Gallery on Saturday, December 13 and runs through January 29. There will be a public reception for the artist on Friday, December 19, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

“Call and Response” presents two series of digital collages by Mr. Johnson. One series is in the scale and language of miniature painting, and the other of storefront advertisements. Each portrays the breakdown of communication, the rupture of cultural continuity, the inaccessibility of both shared and remote experience, despite (or due to) technological advances.

The title of the series “And Gazelles? And Gazelles,” is itself a call and response. As such, it emphasizes connection between parties, and direct causal relationships between events. It evokes the 1970 Art Worker Coalition’s My Lai massacre poster entitled “Q. And Babies? A. And Babies.” While this cycle’s images are more topical and allegorical, featuring attack helicopters in the Middle East and the quick and elegant animals for which they are named, their call is no less clarion.

“Airborne” visualizes call and response in the language of glossy cell phone advertisements, emphasizing communication by visualizing its lack through the muzzling motif of masks. Dust masks, common in Seoul and other cities, are social shells that conceal and reveal collective contamination and individual sacrifice. Indicative of social challenge when worn by protesters, personal vulnerability or pandemic infection when worn by the sick (as in the case of Avian Flu or Ebola), the mask is permeated by fear floating freely between peoples, countries, and continents.

Since 2004, Andrew Ellis Johnson has been an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon School of Art. Some past exhibition topics include: the Haitian grass roots movement; homelessness; predatory economics; hemispheric hegemonies; unabated sowing of land mines; crises in the Middle East; cultural eclipses; and meditations on labor and myth.

Venues for Mr. Johnson’s work have included museums, galleries, electronic arts and video festivals, public collaborations, conferences, books and journals in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

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