Rindon Johnson
Biography
Fruit in Season, 2024
Rindon Johnson’s multifaceted practice explores the complexities of identity and the human experience. He works in numerous modes, from virtual reality and sculpture to poetry and art criticism. His work often delves into themes of belonging, otherness, and the ways language can shape our perception of reality. Johnson’s materials are carefully considered, building on the notion of the by-product and calling upon histories of colonial exploitation and slavery. Using dynamic processes like aging, staining, and exposure to the elements, he encodes time and place as both materials and collaborators. A writer who embraces the ultimate failures of language to convey the depths of emotion and experience, Johnson explores these limits in works that trade in eloquence and opacity in equal measure. With a candid, sharp-edged humor, Johnson’s practice balances playful experimentation with a stark examination of intimacy, violence, and historical legacy.
Rindon Johnson was born in 1990 in San Francisco on the unceded territories of the Ohlone and Coast Miwok people. He has exhibited internationally, including his inclusion in the 2024 Venice Biennale. His solo exhibitions include SculptureCenter, New York; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Albertinum, Dresden; and the Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf. He was included in the Whitney Biennial 2022 and was nominated for the Future Generations Art Prize in 2021. Other institutional group shows include New Museum, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Hammer Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Freiburg Kunstverein, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He was awarded the Ernst Rietschel Art Prize for Sculpture in 2022. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Rennie Museum, MUDAM Luxembourg, and the Whitney Museum of American Art among others. An upcoming solo exhibition at the Rockbund Art Museum in Fall 2024 will be his first institutional showing in Asia.
Johnson is the author of several books of essays and poetry, including Ever Given (François Ghebaly & Inpatient Press, 2023); The Law of Large Numbers: Black Sonic Abyss (SculptureCenter/Chisenhale Gallery, 2021); Shade the King (Capricious Press, 2017); No One Sleeps Better Than White People (Inpatient Press, 2016); and the virtual reality book Meet in the Corner (Publishing-House.Me, 2017).
Rindon Johnson was born in 1990 in San Francisco on the unceded territories of the Ohlone and Coast Miwok people. He has exhibited internationally, including his inclusion in the 2024 Venice Biennale. His solo exhibitions include SculptureCenter, New York; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Albertinum, Dresden; and the Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf. He was included in the Whitney Biennial 2022 and was nominated for the Future Generations Art Prize in 2021. Other institutional group shows include New Museum, Centre Pompidou-Metz, Hammer Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Freiburg Kunstverein, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He was awarded the Ernst Rietschel Art Prize for Sculpture in 2022. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Rennie Museum, MUDAM Luxembourg, and the Whitney Museum of American Art among others. An upcoming solo exhibition at the Rockbund Art Museum in Fall 2024 will be his first institutional showing in Asia.
Johnson is the author of several books of essays and poetry, including Ever Given (François Ghebaly & Inpatient Press, 2023); The Law of Large Numbers: Black Sonic Abyss (SculptureCenter/Chisenhale Gallery, 2021); Shade the King (Capricious Press, 2017); No One Sleeps Better Than White People (Inpatient Press, 2016); and the virtual reality book Meet in the Corner (Publishing-House.Me, 2017).
Works
-
Fruit in Season, 2024 -
3/3/23, 2023
-
Where does the tongue lead the food (screen), 2022
-
The birch canoe slid on the smooth planks. Glue the sheet to the dark blue background. It's easy to tell the depth of a well. These days a chicken leg is a rare dish. Rice is often served in round bowls. The juice of lemons makes fine punch. The box was t, 2022
-
Involuntary smeyes (like puckering), 2022
-
TBD, 2022
-
The justice of it pleases, mocking the meat you feed on, like if they came, what would you do? Grab a bat, a pitch fork, and hold it and wonder what to do? You are my own and in keeping the monster from my eye there is no composition in the mews., 2021
-
Some g are not b. Against the capital I met a lion, who gazed upon me and went surly by without annoying me and yesterday the bird of night did sit even at noon day upon the marketplace hooting and shrieking something like ear me or drink or take me withi, 2021
-
Better storage than an asshole., 2021
-
May the moon meet us apart, may the sun meet us together, 2021
-
Outside I have never been lonesome, Always a fence, a plank, an eyebrow in the ocean, A baby received in a house, anything tall is a tree, The sky rearranges itself in the desert, The sky rearrange itself in the water, The sky rearrange itself while I am , 2021
-
Impressing your manager as if the weather cooperated, gates, gables, services, the return that never comes, or maybe it came and you missed it, the book you were reading when you died, hauling, notary, handyman, counseling, you finished it without shame, , 2021
-
This is the one about how piss can always be cleaned out of carpets., 2021
-
Yes official, morning has broken, dyed shadows, I want to be the boat, I will be the boat, I have willed the boat with the sounds of their wings, the battle, the strip of land, crossing the ocean to elsewhere, I cannot imagine for you wrong blood and too , 2021
-
On the islands the sea breeze is soft and mild. The play began as soon as we sat down. This will lead the world to more sound and fury. Add salt before you fry the egg. The rush for funds reached its peak Tuesday. The birch looked stark white and lonesome, 2020
-
That’s fine, I’ll be back tomorrow, there’s a trail, the wood it feels dark to me, easy to grow, easy to paint and meeting you, from another country, we are a dozen jackets, in the ocean, waiting a whole year for another september, our oldest people call , 2020
-
Among other things (nearby occasions or 8 acts for Jeremy): What should we call this form of existence: a constant vista where from one view one can see the cage of one binding state and from another view, another binding state? Come here and have a taste, 2019
-
View out the slender window: There's always a wait in the soup somewhere and some people are looking with magnifying glass, 2019
-
Meat Growers: A Love Story, 2019
-
They are running together because they sink up together, it feels like they are running slower but they are actually running faster, they are running faster together, 2018
Installation Views
Rindon Johnson, Coeval Proposition #1: Tear down so as to make flat with the Ground or The *Trans America Building DISMANTLE EVERYTHING, 2021-ongoing
Installation view, La Biennale di Venezia 2024, Venice, Italy
Exhibitions
-
Strong Winds Ahead
Curated by Lekha Jandhyala July 29 - September 9, 2023 2245 E Washington Blvd., Los AngelesStrong Winds Ahead is a group exhibition that extends a slow and outward escape. The escape begins in an exhausted city—the destination unclear. Encapsulating the middle space between life and...Read more -
Durian on the Skin
Curated by Gan Uyeda September 17 - October 22, 2022 2245 E Washington Blvd., Los AngelesAnn Greene Kelly Brach Tiller Candice Lin Danica Lundy David Douard Gabriel Mills Isaac Soh Fujita Howell Joeun Kim Aatchim Kelly Akashi...Read more -
Rindon Johnson
Cuvier September 7 - October 15, 2022 391 Grand St., New YorkFrançois Ghebaly is proud to present Cuvier by Rindon Johnson, the artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery’s New York space. Following his presentation at the 2022 Whitney Biennial, Johnson’s...Read more -
Rindon Johnson
The Valley of the Moon May 15 - June 19, 2021 2245 E Washington Blvd., Los AngelesIn the Valley of the Moon the water rolls off the ocean and rushes up the slopes as a dense vapor. It idles in thick white masses at the crest....Read more -
Materia Medica
Curated by Kelly Akashi July 22 - September 4, 2020 2245 E Washington Blvd., Los AngelesAnn Craven Becca Mann Candice Lin Catalina Ouyang Diane Severin Nguyen Evelyn Statsinger Hugh Hayden Janis Miltenberger Jessie Homer French Kay Hofmann Max Hooper Schneider Nancy Youdelman Rindon Johnson ...Read more
Press
-
Critics' Picks: Rindon Johnson
Alec Recinos, Artforum, October 6, 2022 -
The New Social Experiment #661 | Rindon Johnson: Cuvier
Rindon Johnson & Ksenia M. Soboleva, The Brooklyn Rail, October 4, 2022 -
No Word Can Hold the Person. A Conversation with Rindon Johnson
Isabel Parkes, Flash Art, August 24, 2022 -
From the Border, the Whitney Biennial Asks What American Art Can Be
Siddhartha Mitter, The New York Times, March 28, 2022 -
Artist Rindon Johnson Demystifies Our Relationship to Architecture
Osman Can Yerebakan, Interior Design Magazine, February 23, 2022 -
Rindon Johnson on the Currency of Not Knowing
Nicholas Nauman, Frieze, December 7, 2021 -
Rindon Johnson Ruminates on the Expansiveness of Identity
Danilo Machado, Hyperallergic, July 29, 2021 -
Interview: Rindon Johnson on poetry, identity and imagined futures
Harriet Lloyd-Smith, Wallpaper, July 26, 2021 -
Rindon Johnson: Law of Large Numbers
Ann C. Collins, The Brooklyn Rail, July 13, 2021 -
‘The Most Liberatory Thing We’ve Got’: How Artist Rindon Johnson Uses the Power of Language
Emily McDermott, ArtReview, June 29, 2021 -
Your Concise Los Angeles Art Guide for June 2021
Elisa Wouk Almino and Matt Stromberg, Hyperallergic, June 8, 2021
Inquiry