Between reality and its digital surrogate: the paintings of Johnny Izatt-Lowry

The exhibition In, and just outside of by Johnny Izatt-Lowry runs at the gallery Fabian Lang in Zurich until January 31st, 2025.

Modern life exists in two parallel worlds—one tangible, one digital. Increasingly, art consumption favors the latter, with endless streams of images reducing once tactile encounters to impressions on a screen. Johnny Izatt-Lowry’s exhibition In and just outside of at Fabian Lang Gallery in Zurich draws this disparity into focus, probing the consumption of images, perception, and memory.

As the exhibition’s title suggests, Izatt-Lowry’s process begins with observations of objects in or just outside his studio. These are combined with stock images, which he manipulates digitally before painting them from memory. This paradoxical approach transforms digital files—images of once-physical objects—into reimagined, hand-painted works. By filtering layers of reality through his mind, Izatt Lowry resurrects the digital into the tangible, imbuing his paintings with an almost eerie, uncanny familiarity. The exhibition presents ten paintings that reflect this layered approach. The depicted objects hover in a space that feels neither entirely real nor entirely fabricate —an effect achieved through both composition and technique.

The show opens with Car, Parked, where a vintage automobile stretches across the frame, its headlights cutting comically into the night. There’s no driver, no passengers—just a faint, nostalgic absence. Upon closer look, the car’s form begins to dissolve into the sea of pixelated strokes of grey, brown, red, and green, destabilizing the certainty of colour. Rendered in soft pastel on linen, this technique mimics the grainy distortion of an old TV screen, amplifying both the tactile texture of the canvas and the flickering instability of a digital image. The composition feels claustrophobic, as though the car is trapped within the frame. Its form, distilled to little detail, softens to an almost cartoonish quality. Yet subtle hints—the suggestion of its make and a visible registration plate—evoke something vaguely familiar, teasing the boundary between fabrication and recall.

Repetition and mirroring—tools and tricks of both memory and digital manipulation—recur
throughout. Cezanne, Cezanne depicts two seemingly identical books on the French painter,
placed upside-down. The duplicated books invite close scrutiny and comparison; subtle, yet
deliberate differences emerge, resisting easy consumption. This method reflects Izatt Lowry’s
typical approach: he often uses digital tools to clone his subjects before translating them into
paint. By rendering these manipulations by hand, the artist infuses digital reproduction with a
tactile vulnerability, challenging our perception of the “real” and the reproduced.

Similarly, in Two sheets of paper, two mirroring pencils rest on a gingham tablecloth, framing a
still life with aubergine and fruit. The composition feels curated but not convincingly real—its
precision verges on the unnatural. The objects appear weightless, almost suspended above the
tablecloth, its scarlet and vermilion tones starkly contrast with the unprimed linen canvas,
serving as the backdrop for the still life. The work draws on surrealist strategies of dislocation,
where the familiar is subtly distorted to unsettle. It also gestures to the trompe l’oeil tradition,
although avoiding a straightforward illusion. Instead, Izatt-lowry creates a space where the
objects, though rendered with precision, feel detached from any sense of reality.

The same still life from the Two sheets of paper reappears in Still life with Aubergine, sparking a
moment of recognition. The two are rendered almost identically, creating a self-referential meta
world, where compositions echo and overlap. The repetition underscores the artist’s practice of
reusing and recycling compositions, drawing attention to the ways images circulate and are
consumed. In the same vein, Still life on a checked tablecloth offers a subtle critique of endless
reproduction in the digital age. Here, a flattened cigarette smoke marks the only trace of human
presence in the exhibition. The grid-like tablecloth underpins the scene with mathematical
precision, while the peaches contrast with the soft, muted rendering of the surrounding objects.
At the center, a Matisse postcard rests atop a flower drawing—not as homage, but more as a
comment of how his imagery, endlessly reproduced and consumed into banality, has become
ubiquitous in contemporary aesthetics.

Florals take centre stage in several works. Eight Flowers in a Glass presents eight spectral
blooms arranged on a table. While the composition may evoke the intimacy of the still lives of
Albert York or the subtle mysticism of Anna Weyant’s work, Izatt-Lowry’s approach feels
distinctly his own. The linen canvas, left largely exposed, lends the work a textured, brown
paper-like nostalgia. Smooth lines and a gentle pastel palette of whites, ochres, and greens
contribute to an almost childlike sensitivity. Yet, the simplicity belies complexity. The checkered
tablecloth—a recurring element in Izatt-Lowry’s iconography—disrupts spatial coherence. The
flowers feel ghostly yet alive, suspended in a surreal movement. Initially pleasant, the work’s
quiet defiance emerges upon closer inspection. It refuses to please, and neither mimics reality
nor narrates. Instead, it asserts its own existence, while the wide-eyed anemones seem to gaze
back at the viewer.

In White Flowers, an expanse of blooms fills the canvas. It is a stand-out piece both in its scale
and lack of spatial constraints. Unlike the single-object or clustered compositions of other works,
here the lush green field is endlessly punctuated with flowers, creating a meditative, dreamlike
continuity. Subtle shadowing darkens the edges, creating an almost theatrical lighting effect, and
constructing a space that feels simultaneously endless and claustrophobic. Each flower,
meticulously painted, flirts with individuality but dissolves into the mass of the composition. The
eye eagerly attempts to find the rhythm, which feels both deliberate and random. The repetition
of flowers teeters on the edge of becoming decorative yet resists being read as a mere pattern.
Instead, the blooms become a metaphor for the dissolution of individuality in a world of digital
consumption.

In, and just outside of is a study in the fragility of perception. Paradoxically sourced online and
painted from a screen, the paintings draw us away from digital consumption and into
contemplative intimacy of paint. But more than that, they remind us that looking is not passive. It
is a dynamic engagement—a complex act of seeing, remembering, and, ultimately,
understanding.

Text author: Gabija Noller
Photos: Courtesy the artist and Galerie Fabian Lang