Rashid Johnson - Background

Background

Johnson was raised in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois as well as Evanston, Illinois. A photography major, he earned a 2000 Bachelor of Fine Arts from Columbia College Chicago and a 2005 Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After obtaining his Masters degree, he moved to the Lower East Side in New York City, where he teaches at the Pratt Institute. Although he is generally referred to as a photographer and sometimes referred to as a sculptor, in certain contexts, he has been referred to as an artist-magician.

Johnson followed a generation of black artists who focused on the "black experience" and he grew up in a generation that was influenced by hip hop and Black Entertainment Television. Because of his generation's high exposure to black culture within pop culture, his contemporary audiences have a greater learned understanding of the "black experience." The basic exposure of many to the black experience has enabled him to achieve a deeper race and identity interaction.

His work has been exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, DC; the Institute of Contemporary Photography, New York; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. His art is in the collections of most of these museums, and he is represented by art dealers in Milan, Naples, New York City and Chicago. By 2000, his work was held by the Studio Museum in Harlem, and by 2001 he had two photographs in the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 2009, Johnson collaborated with the local Chicago apparel company Flux Collection. Works utilized in Flux products include "Space" (2008, Spray Enamel on Mirror), which was turned into a tee-shirt design.