About Johannes XIV:
Johannes XIV constructs a parallel universe of luxury artifacts, human forms, organic symbols, and cultural debris. Images are altered, embedded, then deliberately disrupted. Materials are harvested to be recycled, reclaimed, and carefully distorted. An evolutionary process driven by a lifelong interest in how systems are built, valued, and experienced by the humans that navigate them. An ever-evolving body of work shifting between recognizable icons and unfamiliar emotional terrain.
Much of Johannes XIV’s work holds deep personal meaning and further explores emotionality, personal healing, and empathetic perspectives. An obsessive effort to construct layered mythical relics that endure beyond their moment of creation.
Layered Precision. Controlled Decay. Suspended Tension.
A Process of Destruction and Rebirth:
Johannes the 14th builds his works through a layered, hybrid process that merges digital composition with physical disruption and reconstruction.
Each piece begins as a digitally constructed collage, informed by conceptual “idea maps” that explore symbolism, power, and cultural narrative. These digital compositions are printed, then intentionally torn apart, fragmented by hand, and reassembled onto canvases already prepared with abstract painted foundations. This act of destruction and rebuilding embeds tension into the work before it is ever unified.
Paint is then aggressively splattered across the surface, forcing cohesion between the abstract ground and the reassembled imagery. A dominant hero image is introduced next, anchoring the composition and reasserting focus. The surface is sealed, then disrupted again with additional splatter, binding old and new layers into a single visual field.
Throughout this stage, microscopic fragments of glass and diamond dust are embedded within the paint. These materials are not decorative; they introduce physical light refraction that shifts with movement, creating a subtle, kinetic experience that cannot be fully captured in photographs.
The process culminates in thick pours of epoxy resin, locking every decision, accident, and fragment in place. The resin amplifies depth, preserves texture, and transforms the surface into a sealed artifact that is part painting, part relic.
Each finished work becomes a frozen moment of controlled chaos: layered, tactile, and irreproducible. What appears unified from a distance reveals complexity, fracture, and material history up close.
