“Johnson’s precise lens allows us to see the relationship between the structural and the personal and how these registers define our lives in New York City. There’s a poetic quality to his incisive critique that asks the viewer to keep returning to the work.” – Elisabeth Sherman, Chief Curator, Museum of The City of New York

“Johnson’s practice is daring and dangerous. It’s mundane yet provocative, teetering between art and activism.” – José Carlos Diaz, Chief Curator, Pérez Art Museum Miami

David L. Johnson’s work focuses on the ongoing effects of privatization, real estate development, and policing on public life in cities. Working across photography, video, found and stolen objects, and sound, Johnson uses direct forms of intervention to engage the politics, histories, and forms of use that define contemporary urban space. Through subtractive gestures, including the removal of hostile architecture, property markers, and surveillance devices, his work traces the material and legal conditions of these sites, producing moments of slippage between public and private property.

Johnson (b. 1993, New York, NY) received a BFA from The Cooper Union in 2015 and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. He is an alumnus of the Whitney Independent Study Program and a part-time faculty member in the Fine Arts MFA program at Parsons School of Design. His work has been exhibited at the 2026 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus; Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago; and MoMA PS1, New York.