It’s no secret that there are certain artists with whom I work repeatedly and to whose practice I feel particularly committed. Rashid Johnson is always on my short list! His exhibition, Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers is on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York through the 18th of this month (January) and if you haven’t seen it already, make it a priority, and if you’ve gone already, definitely go again! Not only is the exhibition his largest museum survey to date, it includes the wide variety of media in which he works. In the exhibition I saw familiar friends–works we included such as the Escape Collages that ask not only where you are right now, but also where you would like to be and how you would get there, and also “The Hikers” the performance and film we commissioned as part of our show together at the Aspen Art Museum. I also saw works like this early print that I had not seen. For me, this work additionally ties Rashid‘s work to that of David Hammons, another artist on my short list, in ways I hadn’t previously recognized. The body prints, the performance, the clever use of recognizable forms—here an infinity sign—to show us something that we thought we knew in a way that we had never previously considered. Rashid is an artist with a brilliance and a fluency consistent across so many mediums that every time we look, we see and learn and know more.
