CHOI&CHOI Gallery Seoul is pleased to present The grass is three inches long, the wolf can hide by Johnny Abrahams, on view from 7 March through 26 April. This marks the artist’s third solo exhibition in Korea, offering a deeper look into his exploration of ‘relationships’ through minimalist abstraction, where precision and material presence coexist.
Johnny Abrahams’ work exists at the intersection of geometric abstraction and the materiality of painting. His compositions extend beyond structured formalism, functioning as both a record of the painting process and a condensed moment of time. The ridges and valleys formed by his brushstrokes are not merely visual effects but traces of the artist’s hand, preserving the act of creation on the canvas.
For Abrahams, materiality is not an incidental aspect of painting but an essential element of balance. Through the interplay of rigorous formality and tactile presence, he imbues his compositions with immediacy and sensory depth, ensuring that they remain ‘present’ rather than detached and mechanical. His use of hessian fabric balances the negative and positive spaces within the composition by providing a textured surface that harmonizes with the materiality of the paint. And the oil paint interacts with light, creating a dynamic surface that shifts with the viewer’s perspective.
A metaphysical curiosity about the origins of matter and light underpins his practice. Abrahams is particularly drawn to the process by which elements are formed within stars—where immense gravitational pressure fuses simple elements into complex matter, releasing light into the universe. He sees this moment of material creation as a poetic phenomenon, one that parallels his own artistic process. To him, painting is an act of dissociation, a state in which thought dissolves into action, the self momentarily disappears, and the sublime is accessed through making rather than reasoning.
The exhibition title is drawn from One Sentence Story, a concept attributed to the Japanese folklorist Yanagita Kunio. A single sentence, when framed as a ‘story,’ invites the reader to imagine an entire world beyond its brevity. Abrahams’ paintings function in a similar way—built from a restrained formal language, they appear minimal yet hold vast potential for meaning. Within their structured surfaces, visibility and obscurity, balance and tension, stillness and movement coexist. Abrahams presents a visual language of restraint that paradoxically conveys infinite possibility. His paintings invite viewers to move beyond the surface, to sense the depth within simplicity, and to uncover hidden narratives embedded within form.
