Rashid Johnson: The Rise and Fall of a Proper Negro

Rashid Johnson's photographs and sculptures examine the often less-examined aspects of the black middle-class.  He states "I am a Negro artist demagogue producing work that allows me to embrace and reject any cultural signifiers that I choose to confront.  Using what David Hammons once called 'cultural abstraction' as a vehicle, I make photographs, videos and sculptures that not only work as devices for self-indulgent muckraking but also provoke bouts of hopeless nostalgia.  The ideas addressed; hair and assorted products, language, violence, and social uprising, all work as tools in my devious plan to spelunk the bottomless agenda of cultural identity politics.  The work neither accepts nor rejects its own accusation of socio-cultural assimilation, but merely comments on the complexity of what W.E.B. Dubois once framed as one's 'double consciousness.'"

Johnson's exhibition The Rise and Fall of a Proper Negro takes its title from Leslie Alexander Lacy's 1970 autobiography.  From portraiture to minimalism, Johnson's exhibition will include among other things work from the series "Talking Proper" using  Luster's Pink Lotion as the catalyst for discourse around race as a construction.  Pink Lotion, one of the most famous black hair care products, provokes feelings of nostalgia in both its scent and distinct color.  However, by disguising this product Johnson begins to critique contemporary acts of assimmilation.  One of the most ambitious pieces in this exhibition will be his nod to minimalist sculpture - a monolithic Plexiglas box filled with Pink Lotion.

Rashid Johnson graduated from Columbia College in 2000 and is currently enrolled in the graduate program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  His work has been included in a number of important museum exhibitions including Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem, a solo show in the 12×12 series at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and currently African American Art from the Permanent Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago and The Squared Circle: Boxing in Contemporary Art at the Walker Art Center Minneapolis.  Upcoming is Only Skin Deep at the International Center of Photography in NY (Dec 03); 404contemporanea Gallery, Naples Italy (group Dec 03/solo 2004); and a survey at Noyes Cultural Center, Evanstaon (Feb 2004).  His work is already in such prominent collections as the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Studio Museum in Harlem.