Rashid Johnson:

New Growth

For Rashid Johnson: New Growth, the artist worked with personally and historically loaded material such as shea butter and black soap, combining it with LP covers and books in complex paintings, sculptures, and installations. His works challenge conventional representations of collective identity. Beginning with the question, “What would happen if Sun Ra, George Washington Carver, and Robert Smithson started a community together in the desert?” New Growth's playful scrutiny intertwined cosmology and escapism in an attempt to blur the lines separating past, present, and future. The physical manipulation of biomaterials into an abstract, aestheticized form is a concept that ran through all of the works in the exhibition. Johnson references the ongoing transformation of both bodies and landscapes, and the identities embedded within them. This exhibition featured newly commissioned works including the video Samuel in Space and the Shea Butter Irrigation System. Works in wax, burned wood, tile and mirror, as well as brass chairs, wood chairs, and rugs rounded out the selection of work.

Rashid Johnson was born in 1977 in Chicago. He was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and his work was exhibited at the Venice Biennale, in 2011; Shanghai Biennale in 2012; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Connecticut; and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Johnson was the recipient of the 2012 David C. Driskell Prize. He lives and works in Brooklyn.