Interview by Francesca Gavin<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0Standing in front of Rashid Johnson work can be an awe-inspiring experience. At times it feels as if his objects embody the entire history of art, ritual and worship \u2013\u00a0true contemporary reinventions of the fetish. These altar pieces, which he often refers to as shelves, manage to fuse the cultural dissection of Sherrie Levine, the textured materiality of Joseph Beuys, the mysterious iconography of African art history and the political accessibility of Public Enemy all at the same time.<\/p>\n
Born in 1977 in Chicago and based in New York, Johnson first garnered attention in 2001, a year after he graduated, with a show curated by Thelma Golden at The Studio Museum in Harlem. His work seemed to pioneer a generation Golden described as \u201cpost-black\u201d. Blackness is something central in his work \u2013 whether that ranges from black textured paint to the blackened stains of branded wood to cleaning black bathroom tiles. Yes, there are also fascinating references to black culture \u2013 from bowls of shea butter to Al Green record covers to exhibition titles referencing the boxing promoter Don King. Yet there is so much more going on in his films, photography and sculptural work than just Afro-Americana. Ideas around materiality, performance, history, music, philosophy, belief, autobiography, masculinity and the language of art itself. What is so exciting about Johnson\u2019s work is how it manages to convey all that in an incredibly accessible way \u2013 using references and imagery that engage people far beyond the confines of the critical art world.<\/p>\n
In person Johnson is laid-back and refreshing, and he works from a studio in an old converted garage in Bushwick, in the wilder ends of Brooklyn. Sun Ra and Coltrane records pile up in boxes amongst branded pieces of wood that make the space feel like a blacksmith\u2019s workshop. Here his assistants create the blank slates and domestic structures that the artist transforms by hand. Johnson is very engaged with his work and the result is a body of work that feels heavyweight and broad at the same time.<\/p>\n
It should be no surprise that over the past 12 months, Johnson\u2019s work has attracted serious attention. A well-represented corner of the Arsenale at last year\u2019s Venice Biennale was followed by a nomination for the Guggenheim\u2019s 2012 Hugo Boss Prize (following in the footsteps of people like Christoph Buchel and Anri Sala). It\u2019s also Johnson\u2019s year of big solo shows \u2013 an impressive exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in New York in January, a one-man show of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in April (later touring to Miami and Atlanta) and an upcoming takeover of South London Gallery coinciding with Frieze.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Contemporary art\u2019s own radical afronaut, Rashid Johnson is riding the medium to somewhere it\u2019s never been before. Here, he opens up to Sleek on his relationship with materials, optimism and those shelves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sleek: You originally began studying photography. How has that influenced what you’re creating now?\u00a0
<\/strong>Rashid Johnson: I think the glue to all is in a strange way an interest in how light hits the surface. A lot of my earlier photographs are Nineteenth Century process photographs. I think this interest in process and material is the thing that holds it all together. That sense of the wonder that comes from learning how to apply a different material to a surface.<\/p>\nSleek: How does history inform what you do?<\/strong>\u00a0
<\/strong>RJ: In a lot of ways, I thought about applying history as a tool and as a material and really showing little fear of manipulating it. I’m not positive there’s ever a really distinct stance taken because I don’t think the work really functions as [something] didactic. It\u2019s more aware of a historical language that I close in and out of – taking historical figures, recontextualising them and placing them in a conversation with me, which is probably enormously ego-driven. It’s part of this game \u2013 to produce a one-to-one relationship between myself and historical figures.<\/p>\nSleek: You\u2019ve referenced specific figures in the record cover, books and materials in your works. What draws you to those individuals?
<\/strong>RJ: My mother being a historian and looking and digging through her library and considering the things she found to be significant. When your mother’s a historian you realise at a young age the value that your caretaker \u2013 the person most important in your life as a young person \u2013 places on things. These histories, and in my case American history as well as African history, politics, philosophy et cetera, was the value tool in my home. Honestly, it\u2019s not so much something I just came to on my own as much as something that was the way I was raised.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Sleek:\u00a0<\/strong>Tell to me about your relationship with materials: what do you find interesting about the ideas around drips and spatter and spill?
<\/strong>RJ: There’s inherently a sloppiness to it that I relate to. Unpredictability. I think it speaks to my interest in improvisation. I’m a big fan of jazz and avant garde jazz. I’m a big fan of hip hop and a lot of the root of hip hop is this improvisation of language, this quickness. This idea that language just comes to you and is born in this rhythmic pattern.\u00a0<\/p>\nIn my work, there\u2019s quite a bit of digging, scratching and a lot of what I always considered removal of material, more than application of material. More often we would consider the work of a painter and we’re thinking about almost exclusively the idea of addition. He takes the paint and he adds to the surface and through that addition an image or whatever is born. My process is \u2013 I don’t want to say more complex than that \u2013 but certainly more layered. There\u2019s a tremendous amount of application, materials being melted, being created to apply to a surface but then after that initial application there’s a whole process of removal. Whether that\u2019s scratching from the surface, digging from the surface, taking away from the surface. That takes me back to my days initially learning about photography, which is a subtractive process. We call it taking pictures. That for me is a really important aspect of how I consider making things.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sleek:\u00a0<\/strong>You\u2019ve used a lot of domestic materials, such as bathroom tiling or parquet flooring. What do you find interesting about contrasting those structures in contrast to all those textured things you use like shea butter or wax?
<\/strong>RJ: I’ve always been interested in domestic space. I think part of the ownership that people are able to acquire from my work is a familiarity with the materials. This kind of \u201cI know what that is\u201d but also \u201cI don\u2019t know what that is\u201d. I think even with the shelves. We understand what a shelf is, or what an altar is, or however you want to describe them. I\u2019ve often described them as something to put something on \u2013 like a vehicle to place things. We all need a place to put our things, whether it’s our emotional baggage or when you come home and you take your keys out of your pocket and you have a side table and a bowl that you place them in. It\u2019s the comfort of knowing where your things are. For me a lot of this work has been an opportunity to place my ideas, my concepts, essentially a lot of this work is my sidetable. The place where I need to locate my ideas, my concepts, the things that I struggle with and the ideas that I’m trying to negotiate. My work has in a lot of ways become that place. \u00a0<\/p>\nSleek:\u00a0<\/strong>What do you find interesting about the defunct sound elements in your work \u2013\u00a0radios we’re not hearing, records that aren\u2019t being played\u2026
<\/strong>RJ: I feel like there\u2019s an opportunity to employ the work differently than you’re witnessing it. That for me is really significant. I made my mother a work and I talked to her a few months later and she was using it! In her space it was very utilitarian. It was a value tool and it was something that was living way outside of just enjoying the aesthetic object. It was an album she was listening to, a book of poems she was reading and a material she was applying to her body. That multiplicity of process and of use value is to me one of the most fascinating things. Obviously in an institution and in a gallery you’re not going to be able to employ it that way necessarily, but just the idea of considering how it would be employed is value enough.<\/p>\nOften with the records, what I really was interested in was pictures. It goes back to my interest in photography. I became less interested for a period in making pictures because there were so many great ones I could find \u2013 like the Al Green cover that I used. Giving those pictures another opportunity to give us something again in a different way.<\/p>\n
Sleek:\u00a0<\/strong>Your wall-based works also seem to play with something quite spiritual and shamanistic and wider ideas about the fetishisation of art.
<\/strong>RJ: They were originally born that way. When I first started making the shelf works I was thinking about historical figures that I\u2019m interested in and I wanted to make things that maybe they would use. It was for people that we just don’t have access to any more, fictional characters or in some cases real characters. It was intended to have a spiritual quality. I wasn’t raised in a religious home, so I’m really interested in this idea of finding a neo-spirituality.<\/p>\nSleek:\u00a0<\/strong>That comes across in your film \u201cThe New Black Yoga\u201d. A sense of an new spiritual language and form of worship.\u00a0
<\/strong>RJ: I was talking to my sister the other day and she’s a really strict atheist. So is my father. They always ask me \u201cdo you believe in God\u201d? And I always say yes. Why not? What do I have to lose? I\u2019m not afraid of the spiritual. It seems like a beautiful opportunity. Coming from no religion, I feel no burden to reject anything. I’ve always been able to delve and born my own spiritual language that is to me very valuable. I find it to be one of the more sincere aspects of the work I do.<\/p>\nSleek:\u00a0<\/strong>There\u2019s something utopian about that language.
<\/strong>RJ: Absolutely. A lot of my work searches to do is define a safe space. There\u2019s a tremendous amount of optimism in my work. It’s not a blind optimism its a very conscious optimism and its about escapism. I always say I could name every one of my shows \u201cI Don’t Live Here\u201d where it\u2019s just about a journey. It\u2019s about searching.<\/p>\nFrom Sleek \u00a034 “The Trip”<\/strong><\/p>\nRashid Johnson “Shelter”
28th September – 25th November
South London Gallery\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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