Reviews

Los Angeles Daily News Tuesday July 25, 1995 / LA LIFE

Cricket Rowland, set decorator for “Batman Forever”, said Gunner’s work “has expression and his own mythology”.

The Christian Science Monitor Friday July, 21 1995

Harry Segil, well known Los Angeles artist and furniture designer, compares Gunner to artists such as photographer Robert Mapplethorpe when they were starting out. “His art makes people look at the culture”, he explains. Segil says Gunner takes cold, inanimate metal and creates poignant angel wings with delicate scales that make a powerful statement about our ability to express spirituality or whimsy in a harsh, material age. “His work exists on many levels”. Segil also says that the job of an artist is to absorb and internalize chats happening, and then to express an encounter with the culture and its effect on the individual. Gunner does that. “He’s got his finger on the pulse of what's happening”, Segil muses. Gunner uses natural materials “in a way that keeps people in touch with their fantasy and spirituality, while at the same time reminding them of the harsh realities of daily life”. “Gunner’s work is very masculine, very primal, but very tender at the same time”, says Alexander Andree, a German painter and owner of the Gallerie Cathedrale. He says Gunner possesses a wonderful combination of primeval power and softness. He brings softness into the hardest of materials, such as wood and steel. “Gunner is a real artist, not just a craftsman”.

Furniture Today July 24, 1995 page 57

Finding dark and nasty furniture for evil personalities can’t be easy, but the film’s set designers found a chair that perfectly reflects one bad guy’s tormented and deviant side and “fused the balance of (his) seething power with elegance.”

Film Crew Magazine Issue #9 1995

The devastation of the Topanga/ Malibu fires and the Northridge earthquake left many people to rebuild their lives. Gunner Johnson, a functional artist, used these furies of nature to create furniture from the actual ashes of the devastation, furniture that would eventually adorn the dark hideaway of Harvey Two-Face in Batman Forever.

Action West Magazine Third Quarter 1995