ART-PRESENTATION: Rashid Johnson-Stranger
Rashid Johnson works in a wide range of everyday materials, he finds inspiration in the work of a diverse group of visual artists, actors, musicians, writers, activists, and philosophers. Often identified with the post-black art movement, Johnson’s work engages questions of personal, racial, and cultural identity, producing a unique synthesis of historical and material references that are grounded in African American and art history while expanding into questions of mysticism and cosmology.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Hauser & Wirth Gallery Archive
Rashid jonson’s solo exhibition ”Stranger” unfolds throughout the entire Hauser & Wirth Gallery Gallery in Somerse, with a combination of painting, sculpture, installation, and drawing, all completed during his residency and is the result of his two-month residency at the Gallery. The exhibition takes its title from an essay “Stranger in the Village” by James Baldwin, on jis experiences as a young African-American man, living in a small village in Switzerland. Much of the exhibition explores themes of escape, and of being a stranger or outsider. In the Threshing Barn the plants have all been sourced locally but bear no connection to their rural location; tropical palms vie for space with yuccas and cacti, spilling out into the courtyard beyond and conjuring images of distant and tropical lands. The first room of the exhibition is occupied by a sculptural installation. Blackened steel cubes recall the minimal, conceptually-driven works of Sol LeWitt, this framework is occupied by diverse elements contained within. The work invites the viewer to walk around and amongst the stacked materials, including plants in ceramic pots made by the artist, parachutes, as well as a selection of books. In the second gallery, the maximal, immersive quality of the first gallery is turned on its head with a reduced, elegant presentation of four new “Untitled Anxious Drawings” that explore the theme of anxiety that runs throughout the artist’s practice. Each drawing presents a grid of rudimentary faces rendered in black oil-stick on cotton rag. In the next room, the theme of anxiety is explored further in the work “Untitled Clowns”. The use of clowns in the title is a reference to jazz musician Charles Mingus’s “The Clown”, spoken word set to music, it tells the dark story of a clown so desperate to make his audience laugh that he ends up blowing his brains out. On the far wall of the gallery, the word “Run” is depicted in neon. The Rhoades gallery contains large panels collaged with diamond-shaped vinyl wallpaper depicting images of palm trees and African masks. These works explore the idea of mask-making both representatively, with overt references to African masks, and also in an abstract sense, with multi-layered imagery, masking what lies beneath. The theme of escape reaches a climax in the final room, with the works “Untitled Beach Collages”. As a child in Chicago, Johnson has recalled the image of a palm tree invited daydreams about success and manhood. He would conjure images of tropical vistas, linking these paradisiacal lands with success, opportunity and aspiration.
Info: Hauser & Wirth Somerset, Durslade Farm, Dropping Lane, Bruton, Somerset, Duration: 27/5-10/9/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-17:00, www.hauserwirth.com
