A muralist scales down his building-sized word art for the gallery

When Ben Johnston started pursuing a full-time art career, he initially did it as a muralist. Born in Canada and raised in South Africa, Johnston came back to Canada as an adult, and started working as a graphic designer, before starting his work in murals. He tapped into his design background and quickly became known for massive slogans on the side of walls, but rendered in such a way that you had to focus a little bit to get the message. 

"Obviously you want to maintain some sort of legibility… but it's not instantly recognizable," he says. "You have to kind of engage a little bit."

In 2019, he started taking his work into galleries. His latest show, Wordplay — running at the Taglialatella Gallery in Toronto from March 23 through April 10 — marks his first forays into sculpture, allowing him to make his work 3D and manipulate letters even further. 

It includes a sculpture that either reads "CHAOS" or "ORDER" depending on how you look at it, and a vertical tube that says "LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE" if you tilt your head and squint. There are also 10 paintings on canvas with messages like "SOME DAY" and "RISE ABOVE."

"There's always some positivity to most of the words that do," he says. "That'll probably ebb and flow over the years though. Maybe there'll be a really dark, emo show next, with a different palette and a different whatever."

How did you get interested in making art about and using text?

I think it's just something you don't see as often. "Forever" can mean something different to you, to me, to somebody else walking down the road. Then, when it comes to the painting, [letters] play with shadows and abstraction as well. 

Do you have any favourite letters or words?

I honestly really enjoy the challenge of these curved letters. Signing up to do an "S" is like another day's work. I just started using an airbrush for this show as well. That was part of this whole learning curve for the show.

The really complicated thing is figuring out how to translate a 50-foot wall to a canvas, and I feel like it's the airbrush that's really helped that transition.

So, the idea for this show started off as a sculpture project, right?

It started out as making sculptures, figuring out some sculpture processes. In the process of designing those, I came up with happy accidents in creating some [paintings]. Like, "This is cool, what if I took a few screenshots and then moved into Photoshop and played around with it?" So while designing [the sculptures] I sort of stumbled across making a more abstract piece.

Wat was process for making the sculptures like?

This was something I wanted to do for a while, so I was looking into it last year. I taught myself Cinema 4D and some 3D programs. The sculptures are resin and they were made in China.

So you didn't actually see them until they were shipped to you. What was that like?

It's literally a box, stamped from China, and you're like, "This better be good." You realize you could have made some tweaks, could have made some changes here and there had I been able to be in the same place. I think in the future, that just makes it, like — I gotta be more more on top of my game in that aspect.

So, has this whet your appetite to get further into sculpture?

[I want to do] something like the public art I've done in the past, but more of a permanent piece. A mural can be tagged on, the building could get knocked down, a car could drive into it. But when you're looking at like a 20 or 30-foot piece of brass or bronze, you're like, "Yeah, this could well outlive us." That sort of permanence would be really exciting.

Is there anything else from this project that you're going to take back into your public art?

It's been a really fun exercise using the airbrush. Now I'm actually going to take some of the stuff I learned with the airbrush and take that back to the murals. Get some of these paint guns and try to fade with those. I'm just waiting for it to warm up.

Wordplay runs at the Taglialatella Gallery in Toronto (99 Yorkville Ave.) to April 10.