#ChasingArt

Rashid Johnson

A POEM FOR DEEP THINKERS

by Karen Gormandy, Fountain House Studio Director

It was the last day of the exhibit at the Guggenheim. Faith, Pamela, Sumit, Maxx, Frankie, Gabriel, and I arrived early and joined a handful of other early birds in line. Snow was forecast for later that day – but it didn't stop any of us from the excitement of chasing A Poem for Deep Thinkers and the work of Rashid Johnson.

The Guggenheim elicits strong reactions.  While Frank Lloyd Wright's spiraling exhibition space is an exciting and innovative design, for some folks, like Maxx, it just gives them vertigo.  

Upon entering the rotunda, we were greeted by live plants suspended from the ceiling.  

The trajectory of deep thinking started with things that are alive, featuring the life in between and unsurprisingly ending in death.  We were about to follow this path as interpreted by Rashid Johnson.

Rashid Johnson does not shy away from much. He incorporates whatever it takes or maybe whatever piques his curiosity to bring his work to life. Born in Chicago, he studied at Columbia College of Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and his work has been exhibited around the world. In his vast 30-year career he’s used unconventional materials (black soap with oyster shells!), language, video, photography, and horticulture to describe a thought, a memory, or a feeling; he has a lot on his mind.

Three Broken Souls, a massive mosaic, is a remarkable combination of media – including ceramic tile, mirror, branded red oak flooring, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap, wax, bronze, oyster shells, and wood. The piece is part of Johnson’s “Soul Painting” series that explores the transition from the physical to the metaphysical. Strategically placed at the entrance, it is a beginning and an end evoking three larger-than-life souls, with eyes and breasts being the only recognizable features indicating a relationship to anything human.    Dramatic dark lines and bright orange mark the strength of their presence. 

Gabriel, Maxx, and Pamela took the elevator up, Faith, Sumit and I worked our way up from the ground floor. We started with death.

The pieces on death were both provocative and wry – none shying away from the magnitude and intensity of death.  In Self-Portrait Laying on Jack Johnson’s Grave, the fully clothed artist splays his body over a tomb engraved with the last name he shares with the occupant of the tomb, the boxer Jack Johnson whose defeat of titleholder James Jeffries in 1910 led to race riots.  

Not too far away, “STAY BLACK AND DIE” is spray-painted on black fabric. I must admit to laughing – it was a joyous display and full-on bad*ss humor. In a New Yorker article featuring the artist, when asked about the term “post-Black,” Rashid Johnson deadpanned, “I am currently and presently Black.”

Rashid Johnson can do a lot with a lot and a lot with a little. In Untitled Anxious Audience – a series of scrawled faces on ceramic tile and black soap – the faces form a grid of startled anxiety. Further on are a series of soulful portraits, one a striking image – a rich, sepia-toned, black and white photo of a man covering his face with both hands, the black skin of his hands weathered and aged.  His face is slightly bent and obscured; is it pain, is he crying, is it surrender, is it exhaustion, or is it hopelessness?  Further up the rotunda, spray-painted against a white background, is the word “DEATH”. “RUN” is similarly scrawled against a mirror, and again “THE DEAD LECTURER” and “FLY AWAY,” not to mention “NO MAS,” with each declaration punctuating the works in between.  

Nowhere Man, a triptych oil on linen is a geometric scrawl of red, white and blue gridded rectangles.  

In Cosmic Slop 14, 18 and 7 – with black soap and wax on wood panels – the artist created thick monochromatic layers of soap that move away from traditional brushwork and conventional material to explore the concept of flow and flux. It is only when you get closer that you see the fluidity and texture of the medium.

As we made our way up, we took a pitstop in a room of books – poetry books and Black history books and fiction – reminding us that the work is poetry and reminding us not to forget to add words, maybe our own, to the visuals.

We ended at the top with a rich horticultural celebration. The poem was alive, thriving, floating, and dying.