PRESENTATION: Rashid Johnson-Broken Crowd
Rashid Johnson is recognized as one of the major voices of his generation, an artist who composes searing meditations on race and class while establishing an organic formal vocabulary that fuses a variety of sculptural and painterly traditions. Though he employs materials drawn from specific autobiographical contexts—including those related to African American intellectual and imaginative life—and though his practice had its beginnings in photography and conceptual art, Johnson is equally interested in testing the ability of abstract visual languages to communicate across cultural boundaries.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Israel Museum Archive
Rashid Johnson’s work is known for its narrative embedding of a pointed range of everyday materials and objects, often associated with his childhood and frequently referencing collective aspects of African American intellectual history and cultural identity. To date, Johnson has incorporated elements / materials / items as diverse as CB radios, shea butter, literature, record covers, gilded rocks, black soap and tropical plants. Many of Johnson’s works convey rhythms of the occult and mystic: evoking his desire to transform and expand each included object’s field of association in the process of reception. “Broken Crowd”, a solo exhibition by Rashid Johnson, includes a selection of three artworks by Johnson, including the film The Hikers (2019) and two paintings: “Untitled Broken Crowd” (2019) and Cosmic Slop (Grease)” (2011). In the painting “Cosmic Slop (Grease)” Johnson poured liquefied black soap mixed with wax on a board, making marks in the material before it solidified. The soap, originating in West Africa and used to treat sensitive skin, acts in Johnson’s work as a kind of protective layer that symbolizes healing power. The vitality of the material and its spontaneous effusion echo the artist’s body movements while creating the painting, as in a performative dance. The extroverted energy of the abstract action painting is also apparent in the facial expressions of the figures in the mosaic “Untitled Broken Crowd”. Rows of human beings, undifferentiated by race, sex, or nationality, emerge from the fragments of colored ceramic tiles, mirror, and wood. Their wide-open eyes and gaping mouths express anxiety, shock, or frustration with the human condition in the present day. They are witnesses to police brutality, violent political rhetoric, and the refugee crisis, or are protesters against these social ills. Their figures, depicted in an abstract idiom, recall African masks, like those worn by the men in the video work “The Hikers”. The film “The Hikers” captures two black men who encounter each other while one is ascending and the other descending a mountain’s peak. Their choreographed platonic love story (a version of which the men, both with the Martha Graham Dance Company, perform at the museum) can be viewed as a metaphor about the black experience of alienation in the US. “People of color recognize the existence of one another” Johnson says. “Oftentimes, when people see each other in such circumstances, there’s this kind of joy, almost love”. But, he adds, yearning to connect is also central to the human condition as a whole. Although he has made several films revolving around black figures in motion, “The Hikers” is the most narrative, which he acknowledges may be a result of just having directed his first feature, Native Son, an adaptation of the Richard Wright novel.
Photo: Rashid Johnson, Untitled Broken Crowd, 2021, Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red, oak, oyster shells, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap, wax, 243.8 x 304.8 x 7.6 cm / 96 x 120 x 3 in, © Rashid Johnson, Photo: Martin Parsekian, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Gallery
Info: Curator: Orly Rabi, Israel Museum, Derech Ruppin 11 Jerusalem, Israel, Duration: 8/8-2/12/2023, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun 10:00=17”00. Tue 10:00-21:00, https://www.imj.org.il/
