Rashid Johnson

Anima

14 October – 21 December 2024

Paris

Recognized as one of the leading voices of his generation, Rashid Johnson’s new works in this exhibition at our Paris gallery, which span painting, sculpture and film, demonstrate the artist’s longstanding interest in the concepts of interiority and self-reflection. The exhibition marks the gallery debut of two new bodies of painting, the closely-related Soul Paintings and God Paintings, both series that Johnson has developed over the past year. Alongside and evolving out of the works on canvas are two new series of bronze sculptures, their roughly-modeled surfaces bearing witness to the artist’s hand in a way that has dominated his sculptural practice in recent years. Also on display is the artist’s latest film, ‘Sanguine,’ exploring relationships of attention and care among three generations of the artist's family: his father, himself and his son.

Continuing to expand his distinctive visual lexicon, this exhibition exemplifies the artist’s interest in animism, the belief in which all things, including inanimate objects, have souls. Through the concept of animism, the artist connects to a reality beyond the physical, building an expansive vision of the universe in which all objects, including the paintings and sculptures on view, are imbued with spiritual life.

Throughout the exhibition, Johnson returns to an iconic form within his visual language, the evocative almond-shaped vesica piscis, a leitmotif that has been in use in visual culture around the world since humanity's earliest days. Employed vertically in the deeply personal God Paintings, this form takes on a ritual, meditative quality, its constant repetition forming a visual mantra that recalls vernacular forms familiar from any number of diverse material cultures. Employed horizontally in the Soul Paintings, the abstract form takes on a representational, biological quality, suggesting mask-like cranial forms, eyes and skeletal pectorals. Johnson harnesses these evocative motifs to capture and examine his spiritual journey, and the exhibition invites viewers to embark on their own.

_{Photo: Joshua Woods}

About the Artist

Rashid Johnson

Born in Chicago in 1977, Rashid Johnson is among an influential cadre of contemporary American artists whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, philosophy, materiality, and critical history. Johnson received a BA in Photography from Columbia College in Chicago and studied for his masters at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Johnson's practice quickly expanded to embrace a wide range of media--including sculpture, painting, drawing, film making, and installation--yielding a complex multidisciplinary practice that incorporates diverse materials rich with symbolism and personal history. Johnsons work is known for its narrative embedding of a pointed range of everyday materials and objects, often associated with his childhood and frequently referencing aspects of history and cultural identity. Many of Johnson’s more recent works delve into existential themes such as personal and collective anxiety, interiority, and liminal space.