Hauser & Wirth presents Rashid Johnson's first exhibition in Spain
From 19 June to 13 November 2022, Hauser & Wirth Menorca presents 'Sodade', the first exhibition in Spain of the work of American artist Rashid Johnson.
Source: Hauser & Wirth · Image: Rashid Johnson, Seascape “Angola”, 2022. Oil on linen, 185.4 x 246.4 x 6.5 cm / 73 x 97 x 2 1/2 in © Rashid Johnson. Photo: Stephanie Powell
Born in Illinois in 1977, Rashid Johnson rose to fame as part of the exhibition "Freestyle" curated by Thelma Golden in 2001, and the following year he organised his most controversial and well-known exhibition, "Chickenbones and Watermelon Seeds: The African American Experience as Abstract Art", in which the works included were based on stereotypical elements of black culture in the United States. 'Sodade' features a new series of bronze sculptures, as well as works from his "Seascape Paintings" series of paintings, along with "Bruise Paintings" and "Surrender Paintings".
Hauser & Wirth explains that Johnson "continues to work with a complex range of iconographies to explore collective and historical expressions of longing and displacement, while speaking to the times we live in," noting that "capturing both subjective and collective historical states in real time, the artist has pivoted the ‘Anxious Red’ paintings iconography, which portrayed crowds of bright red faces, to Bruise Paintings and Surrender Paintings in hues of blues and whites. Johnson selects his typical materials and tools – such as shea butter and black soap – for the importance of their historical narratives. Here he has chosen to use the canonically significant, and universally recognizable, medium of oil paint in order to communicate his message all the more urgently."
The gallery also explains that the title of the exhibition derives both from the Portuguese word "saudade", which refers to a feeling of melancholy and absence, and from a Cape Verdean song from the 1950s, popularised by Cesária Évora "that narrates a profound emotional state of longing on ‘the long way’ to São Tomé."

Read the full article