Rashid Johnson

Nudiustertian is an obsolete English phrase meaning of or related to the day before yesterday or the very recent past. For Johnson, the exhibition ‘Nudiustertian’ is an exploration of his own very recent past, with the works representing part of his practice that developed between 2018 and the present. All of these works track both his individual personal and artistic evolution throughout the last several years but also mirror the global zeitgeist.

Capturing both subjective and collective historical states in real time, the artist pivoted this iconography to his Bruise Paintings and Surrender Paintings, rendered in hues of blues and whites. For the Bruise Paintings, Johnson created the color ‘Black&Blue’ in collaboration with R&F paints, which he layers and stretches across the canvas, giving the impression of a wider range of colors from a single hue. The repetition and expressiveness of the blue figures bring mobility to the works, a nod to the importance of gesture in Johnson’s oeuvre. With a lyrical sense of melancholy, the Bruise Paintings speak to the times we live in and create a liminal space where healing has begun but the remnants of trauma are still evident.

The exhibition also includes a newly developed series of Seascape Paintings in which canvases are coated completely with Neutral White or Prussian Blue oil paint which Johnson wipes away and scratches into with shapes reminiscent of row boats. The artist sees these shapes as vessels for the self and the works speak to a sense of autonomy, independence and individualism in a time where coalition-building and collectivism seem to be more the appropriate activation for an artwork. The repetition of the motif and their scale suggests the possibility of escape, as well as of isolation, longing and drifting at sea.

Constituting a continuation of Johnson’s Broken Men series, these profound, ever-complex mosaics push the anxiety of the figures, both metaphorically and physically, to a breaking point. These ‘broken men’ speak to the collective and individual identities in the midst of shifting social realities. Contemporary sensibilities are deconstructed and reassembled in Johnson’s collages, resulting in works of resounding catharsis. The existential questions in the artist’s work are in many ways prescient and timeless. ‘Nudiustertian’ is reflecting on the triumph and trauma both personal to Johnson and to all of us over the last several years, our recent past.