Rashid Johnson (b. 1977, Chicago) 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. The visceral experience of art, on formal terms, is therefore considered inseparable from the social matrix that gives rise to it. Johnson’s work is predicated upon moving freely between these two modes. The breadth and generosity of his vision has resulted in a wide range of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects, installations, videos, and performances.
In 2025, Rashid Johnson will be the subject of a major mid-career survey at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, which will travel to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Johnson has also been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2019); Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2019); Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri (2017), which traveled to the Milwaukee Art Museum (2017); Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow (2016); and Drawing Center, New York (2015). Recent group exhibitions include By Way Of: Material and Motion in the Guggenheim Collection, Guggenheim Museum, New York (2024); Day for Night: New American Realism, Palazzo Barberini, organized by the Aïshti Foundation, Rome (2024); Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America, New Museum, New York (2021); The Stomach and the Port, Liverpool Biennial, England (2021); The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014); and ILLUMInations, International Pavilion, 54th Venice Biennale, Italy (2011). His work is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Guggenheim Museum, New York; Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo, Norway; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. His first feature-length film, an adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released on HBO in 2019. Johnson lives and works in New York.
Rashid Johnson
Untitled Anxious Bruise Drawing, 2021
oil on cotton rag
60 x 40 1/2 inches
(152.4 x 102.9 cm)
framed:
62 5/8 x 43 1/8 x 2 1/4 inches
(159.1 x 109.5 x 5.7 cm)
Rashid Johnson
Untitled Totem, 2021
cast bronze
98 x 55 x 61 inches
(248.9 x 139.7 x 154.9 cm)
Edition of 2, with 1 AP
Rashid Johnson
Two Standing Broken Men, 2020
ceramic tile, mirror tile, oyster shells, branded red oak, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap, and wax
95 x 74 x 3 inches
(241.3 x 188 x 7.6 cm)
Rashid Johnson
Untitled Escape Collage, 2018
ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak flooring, vinyl, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap, and wax
97 x 73 x 2 1/2 inches
(246.4 x 185.4 x 6.4 cm)
Rashid Johnson
Untitled Anxious Audience, 2016
ceramic tile, black soap, and wax
94 1/4 x 158 1/2 x 2 1/2 inches
(239.4 x 402.6 x 6.4 cm)
Rashid Johnson
Falling Man, 2016
mirrored tile, ceramic tile, spray enamel, vinyl, black soap, and wax
96 1/2 x 73 x 2 inches
(245.1 x 185.4 x 5.1 cm)
Rashid Johnson
Un-American Idol, 2014
mirrored tile, vinyl, book, plant, shea butter, black soap, and wax
72 1/2 x 98 x 14 inches
(184.2 x 248.9 x 35.6 cm)
Rashid Johnson
Plateaus, 2014
steel, spray enamel, plants, ceramic, concrete, plastic, brass, burned wood, grow lamps, CB radios, shea butter, rugs, and books
228 x 180 x 180 inches
(579.1 x 457.2 x 457.2 cm)
Installation view, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2017
Rashid Johnson
Cosmic Slop "Planet Rock", 2012
black soap and wax
72 x 48 x 1 3/4 inches
(182.9 x 121.9 x 4.4 cm)
Rashid Johnson
Houses in Motion, 2012
branded red oak flooring, black soap, and wax
96 x 120 x 2 3/4 inches
(243.8 x 304.8 x 7 cm)
Rashid Johnson
Souls of Black Folk, 2010
stained wood, books, vinyl, brass, shea butter, plants, space rocks, mirrors, gold paint, black soap, and wax
114 x 124 3/4 x 24 inches
(289.56 x 316.865 x 61.278 cm)
Rashid Johnson
Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos, 2008
steel
136 1/2 x 126 x 24 inches
(346.7 x 320 x 61 cm)
Installation view, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
Mandalit Del Barco
Christopher Stackhouse