Featured prominently in the Blue Lobby are four works by Matt Johnson (b. 1978), from his series titled Lautner Beam / Super String. Johnson created these works using repurposed cast- offs from John Lautner’s demolished Shusett House that translate as rustic, metaphysical visualizations of string theory, the forms hypothesized to describe matter itself. Cast in steel from the arched beams of Lautner’s modernist structure, they are reworked into trompe-lʼoeil, elegant forms.
Working with traditional media including bronze, stone, wood, steel and aluminum, Johnson’s work utilizes materials that are synonymous with strength, belying the delicate, sensuous, and sometimes weightless appearance of the sculptures themselves. Objects seem to be poised just so, however fragile in their disposition. The work focuses on the physical point at which an object, when standing on its own, becomes a sculpture.