Broken Men Table (2024)
About the Work
“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. Within these bustling compositions, rudimentary renderings of the human face are brought to the fore, their wild and agitated expressions speaking to both individual and collective identities against shifting social realities. Of these earlier works, Johnson has said, “I’m trying to illustrate tons of different people and at the same time they’re probably all me”.
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. Also recalling eyes turned on their sides, the motif provides a nod to the reverence Johnson holds for things he cannot explain but feels inside, and is a powerful new addition to his visual lexicon. On the painting, Johnson says, “I happened to be outside one day laying with my family. I closed my eyes and I was looking up at the sun. It was a warm day. I saw this red behind my eyes and I said to myself, this is incredibly simple: I’m going to call that thing God.”
About the Artist
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.