In “Territoires intimes” (Intimate territories), Harlan Johnson’s paintings refer to cellular, insect, and reptilian forms. Hovering somewhere between abstraction and figuration, his colorful two-panel pieces examine this bio-matter as if it were frozen between the moment of creation and its resolution in form. In Bactrician Topography, 1995, two panels—one white, one yellow—compose a kind of two-dimensional nonspace teeming with organic forms, cell structures, radial patterns, the silhouette of a frog, and assorted indeterminate shapes. In Ear Algae, 1995, the protozoic becomes prosaic; his