Rashid Johnson

Contemporary American artist Rashid Johnson works across a variety of mediums to investigate art history, personal narratives, literature, philosophy, materiality and social critique. From painting and sculpture to filmmaking and installation, Johnson is particularly concerned with African American identity and modern culture. He does not directly depict himself in his work, instead using materials like black soap and shea butter to symbolize his own blackness, although he has begun depicting abstracted figures in recent paintings. He has also used many unexpected but symbolically significant materials such as record covers, CB radios, gilded rocks and tropical plants.

Johnson was born in Chicago in 1977. He studied at the Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and shortly following his first exhibition, he was included in the 2001 exhibition ‘Freestyle’ at the Studio Museum of Harlem. This placed his paintings alongside Julie Mehretu, Mark Bradford and Eric Wesley in the context of conceptual post-black art. Johnson, however, does not use this term to refer to his own practice, but he has named the cartoonish styles of Philip Guston and George Condo as artistic influences. Johnson has shown extensively in the United States and abroad, and he has won the David C. Driskell Prize and the Tony Goldman Visionary Artist Award. He now lives and works in New York.

-       Antoine’s Organ, 2016, Black steel, grow lights, plants, wood, shea butter, books, monitors, rugs, piano, 338 x 189 x 126 3/4 inches (858.5 x 480.1 x 321.9 cm), major installation

-       Untitled Escape Collage, 2018, ceramic tile, mirror tile, red oak flooring, vinyl, spray enamel, oilstick, black soap and wax, mounted to board (182.9 x 121.9 cm.)