SEVEN ROOMS AND A GARDEN
RASHID JOHNSON AND THE MODERNA MUSEET COLLECTION
30.9 2023 – 8.9 2024
STOCKHOLM
In “Seven Rooms and a Garden”, the work of American artist and filmmaker Rashid Johnson is in conversation, confrontation, and sometimes collusion with the collection of Moderna Museet. Each room in the exhibition (and the garden) stages an encounter based on the personal, political, and art historical relationships that Johnson holds in his practice.
For Rashid Johnson, abstraction is a source of life. In his “Bruise” and “God” paintings, the abstract mark is an expression of a spiritual or psychological journey. His monumental installation “Home” (2023) finds form for Black intellectual and cultural histories, in sheabutter sculptures, books, and the growth of plant life. His film “Black and Blue” (2021) is an abstract self-portrait through daily, intimate acts that together describe a life.
In all the works and interventions in “Seven Rooms and a Garden”, Johnson explores the gesture of abstraction as an art historical lineage, a political necessity, or a personal appeal.
We invite you to meet Rashid Johnson—through Robert Rauschenberg, Max Ernst, Salman Toor, Klara Lidén, and Maia Cruz Palileo, through Ernest Mancoba, Tadeusz Kantor, Herbert Gentry, Asger Jorn, Jackson Pollock, Karel Appel, Willem de Kooning, Etel Adnan, Sam Francis, Jean Fautrier, Marcia Hafif, and Stanley Whitney, through Cy Twombly, Lucio Fontana, Ruben Valentim, Jean Dubuffet, Joan Miró, Niki de Saint Phalle, Lee Bontecou, Lee Lozano, and Barnett Newman, through Louis Armstrong, through Marcel Duchamp, through Henri Mattise, Tony Cokes, Sun-Ra, and Cauleen Smith, through Louise Bourgeois, through On Kawara, through Sol LeWitt and David Hammons, through Melissa Shook, Soufiane Ababri, Andy Warhol, Cecilia Edefalk, and Samuel Fosso.