Rashid Johnson

Untitled Anxious Red Drawings

16 April 2020

Online Exhibition

With the online exhibition ‘Untitled Anxious Red Drawings,’ American artist Rashid Johnson introduces a selection of new works made since the onset of the global coronavirus pandemic. Using oil stick on cotton rag paper, the artist has here updated the visual language of his long-established Anxious Men series, in which deceptively crude archetypal faces express the fundamental tensions and traumas that course through contemporary life. By departing from his signature use of black wax to adopt a blood red medium for the first time in this well-known series, Johnson captures the 'life and death' urgency of an unprecedented moment that is now both separating and connecting communities around the globe. His Anxious Red Drawings could be read as history paintings for our times.

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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, matenality, and critical history. Johnson received a BA in Photography from...

Current Exhibitions