Rashid Johnson: Anxious Audience

Rashid Johnson: Anxious Audience
21.09.2019 - 05.01.2020

Curator: Lauren Barnes
Assistant Curator: Amin Alsaden, RBC Curatorial Fellow

For his first solo presentation in Canada, American artist Rashid Johnson has undertaken a major new site-specific work. This is the fifth iteration of the Clerestory Commission Program, which invites artists to respond to The Power Plant’s central light-filled space.

Since 2015, Johnson’s output has encompassed representational works entitled Anxious Audiences. For The Power Plant, he has developed an ambitious new work in this series, enveloping visitors amongst an accumulation of portraits incised in West African black soap and wax on white tile panels. Reflecting a sense of collective unease, this crowd of faces emerges through a process of "drawing through erasure" into the viscous black surfaces.