The Sweet Science (Primary Title)

Rashid Johnson, American, born 1977 (Artist)

2011
American
Branded red oak flowering, black soap, wax, and paint
Overall: 96 1/2 × 132 1/2 × 2 3/8 in. (245.11 × 336.55 × 6.03 cm)
2015.369a-g

I deal with the more formal concerns of abstraction, even in works like the branded wood pieces, which also relate to critical and conceptual notions. 

–Rashid Johnson

 

Johnson, who began his career as a photographer, is invested in materials, tools, and objects that speak to the black American experience. For the artist, his works must possess personal, cultural and/or political dimension to truly resonate. In The Sweet Science, Johnson gives “agency to the last thing that people notice,” the floor. Using a banding tool, he inscribed signs and symbols that appear like an undecipherable code on the surface of red oak flooring.

 

The Sweet Science was originally featured in Johnson’s solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth titled Rumble. The exhibition’s title and material used in the works not only referenced the gallery’s previous life as the Upper East Side home of boxing promoter Don King, but also the famous 1974 match the promoter orchestrated between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman–“The Rumble in the Jungle” that took place in Zaire.

Gift of Pamela K. and William A. Royall, Jr.
Rashid Johnson RUMBLE, Hauser & Wirth, New York, N.Y. January 11 - February 25, 2012
© Rashid Johnson

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