Rashid Johnson's new site-specific sculpture debuts on the High Line

The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Friday, March 29, 2024


Rashid Johnson's new site-specific sculpture debuts on the High Line
Rashid Johnson, Blocks, 2015. A High Line Commission. On view May 2015 – March 2016. Photo by Liz Ligon.



NEW YORK, NY.- Presented by Friends of the High Line, High Line Art announces that acclaimed artist Rashid Johnson is presenting his first public commission in New York City, a new site-specific work installed among the vegetation of the High Line at Little West 12th Street. On view this spring, the sculpture transforms as it interacts with the surrounding plant life over the course of its almost year-long residency in the park. Titled Blocks, the work is on view from May 2015 to March 2016.

Inspired by a childhood steeped in African American cultural influences, Rashid Johnson creates layered artworks that engage a conversation between personal biography and the implied gravitas of larger cultural and historical narratives. Johnson works predominantly in mixed media sculptures and paintings, combining bare materials such as mirror, wood, and shea butter with loaded iconic objects including record covers, CB radios, historical books, and common domestic objects. Throughout his career, Johnson has explored the ways in which we form our sense of belonging to races and communities, investigating the relationship between familiar objects and identity.

For his High Line Commission, Johnson built one of his minimalist three-dimensional steel black grids, which houses a variety of objects including busts painted to resemble shea butter (a material commonly used by the artist), and acts as a living greenhouse as plants on the High Line begin to intertwine with the sculpture over the year of its installation. Playing with forms taken from the Minimalist tradition – Sol LeWitt’s white open cubes come to mind – Johnson turns them into a reflection on blackness by breaking the rational structure open and embedding loaded objects within it.

Installed in an oblong island of plants growing between pathways on the High Line just south of The Standard, High Line, the sculpture will change over the course of its installation, the empty rectilinear vessel becoming a horticultural container as the seasons pass. The work reflects the artist’s ongoing interest in a line from a book by Lawrence Weiner called “Something to Put Something On,” in which the concept “table” is explained as “something to put something on.” This semiotic explication resonates with Johnson, who pushes its implications toward thinking about the ways in which lives, cultures, and historical arcs are a mere practice of putting some things on top other things that are imagined to be taken as given, such as the exemplary case of the table.

Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art says “We are thrilled to be presenting Rashid Johnson’s first public commission in New York City. The installation expands the artist’s interest in questioning the tradition of minimalism by integrating organic forces within it. I look forward to seeing how Blocks will interact with the living vegetation of the High Line and what happens when the domestic space is brought out into the public realm.”










Today's News

May 15, 2015

Roof Garden installation by French artist Pierre Huyghe opens at Metropolitan Museum

Quartet of flower paintings, two of irises, two of roses, by Van Gogh on view at the Metropolitan

Met Museum and National Gallery of Art acquire significant works by Aaron Douglas

Christie's Evening Sale of Impressionist and Modern Art realizes $202,608,000

New paintings and photography by British artist David Hockney go on show in London

Scottsdale Auctions & Appraisals announces Native American, Photos, Fine Art and Asian Antiquities sale

Christie's Post-War and Contemporaru Art Evening Sale achieves $658,532,000

Exhibition of rarely or never-before-seen early paintings by Michael Heizer opens at Gagosian

Photographic record of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo's wardrobe and belongings opens at Michael Hoppen Gallery

Exhibition highlights radical Modernist movements in Russian and German art during the early twentieth century

'Marcel Dzama: Mischief Makes a Move' opens at the World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis

Nohra Haime Gallery opens Carlos Rojas' first retrospective exhibition in New York

Art expert and appraiser Lark Mason named new Chairman of Asia Week New York

Important bust of John F. Kennedy features at Bonhams

Exhibition of sculptures by Thomas Houseago opens at Gagosian

Mick Peter creates a monumental cartoon-like illustration for new commision at Tramway

Bonhams to sell contents of historic French chateau

Jessie Edelman's first solo show with Robert Blumenthal Gallery opens in New York

Art Basel's Unlimited to present 74 ambitious and large-scale works spanning five decades

Rashid Johnson's new site-specific sculpture debuts on the High Line

UNESCO chief appeals for sparing Palmyra from Syria fighting

John Paul II's blood-stained cassock on display 34 years after shooting

Strong demand for Pop-Art and Op-Art at Bonhams Post-War and Contemporary Sale

Patek Philippe once owned by Eric Clapton sells for US$ 438,602 at Sotheby's Geneva watch sale

Jonathan A. Olsoff named Worldwide General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Sotheby's




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful