Still from ‘Birthday Boys’ © Rashid Johnson.
3 November 2026 – 16 January 2027 | New York, Wooster Street
Rashid Johnson: Birthday Boys
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.
This November, Rashid Johnson will present an exhibition of new work that considers the complex relationship between fathers and sons. Including five new mosaic works, a group of suspended sculptural figures known as the ‘Exhausted Figures,’ and one new film, ‘Birthday Boys’ (2026), the presentation explores tensions between the fundamental imperatives of intimacy and independence, inheritance and self-determination, considering what it means to recognize another person as separate from oneself, even when that person shares one’s history, gestures and features.
Peruse the exhibition and then dine amongst Rashid Johnson’s specially-commissioned pieces at Manuela.
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About
Rashid 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.
Broken Men Table (2024)
Commissioned Work at Manuela NYC
“Broken Men Table” (2024) is a site specific artwork and functional object, specially commissioned for Manuela, New York. At seven meters long and oval-shaped, Johnson’s first table, ‘Broken Men Table’ seats twenty-four diners. With a mosaic surface comprised of handmade artisanal and industrial tiles, spray paint and smashed mirrors, ‘Broken Men Table’s’ collage-like composition, cracked colors and abstracted faces recall Johnson’s ‘Anxious Men’ and ‘Broken Men’ series, in which the human figure is pushed to breaking point.
Rashid Johnson’s rug (2024), is a site-specific rug created in close partnership with Tessere, a bespoke carpet design firm based in the UK. Designed in an oval shape to mirror the structure of Manuela’s private dining room, the rug borrows its striking visuals from Johnson’s ‘God Painting “A New Day”’ (2023), an abstract and almost geometric work that takes liminality and rebirth as its subjects. Depicting a series of almond shapes impressed in white into deep crimson, the image plays with the intersection of overlapping circles, and solidifies the liminal spaces that are conjured between.