In 1965, John Urho Kemp earned a degree in chemical and biochemical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. He worked as a chemical engineer for nearly two years before resigning. Gradually, he turned to Scientology, which he studied in England and Los Angeles until 1971. During the following decade, he managed an antiques shop in Los Angeles and arranged his schedule so he could attend solar eclipses around the world.
Kemp’s life would henceforth be oriented toward a mystical calling: achieving revelation through meditation, metaphysics, and mathematics. Instead of writing, Kemp assigned a biographical function to mathematical formulas organized into diagrams. After photocopying his drawings, he distributed them as messages to the world. He was also interested in the properties of healing crystals, which earned him the nickname “Crystal John.”
His works were discovered at the time of his death in the apartment where he lived. His friend, photographer Aram Muksian, preserved them and created online archives that attracted the interest of several figures, including Daniel Baumann, who initiated the first exhibition devoted to him in 2014 at the 548 Center in New York.