Rashid Johnson: Stranger

Hauser & Wirth Somerset is delighted to present ‘Rashid Johnson. Stranger’, following the artist’s two-month long residency at the gallery. Rashid Johnson employs a wide range of materials and images to explore themes of art history, literature, philosophy, and personal and cultural identity. His exhibition at Hauser & Wirth Somerset unfolds throughout the entire gallery, with a combination of painting, sculpture, installation, and drawing, all completed during his residency.

The exhibition takes its title from an essay ‘Stranger in the Village’ by James Baldwin. Originally published in Harper’s Magazine in 1953, it is the account of Baldwin’s experiences as a young African-American man, living in a small village in Switzerland.

The first room of the exhibition is occupied by a sculptural installation that responds directly to the architecture of the historic Threshing Barn. Blackened steel cubes recall the minimal, conceptually-driven works of Sol LeWitt; here, this familiar framework is occupied by diverse elements contained within. A development from Johnson’s previous architectural grids, the work is immersive, inviting the viewer to walk in, around and amongst the stacked and hanging materials, including plants in ceramic pots made by the artist, shea butter, parachutes, and books.

Much of this exhibition explores themes of escape, and of being a stranger or outsider. In the Threshing Barn the plants have all been sourced locally but bear no connection to their rural location; tropical palms vie for space with yuccas and cacti, conjuring images of distant and tropical lands. Parachutes hint at the idea of leaping into the unknown.

A meta-narrative also exists within the work; the parachutes reference a mysterious man, known as DB Cooper, who hijacked a Northwest Airlines flight in 1971, extorted $200,000 and parachuted to an uncertain fate. Numerous theories as to his whereabouts, and whether he even survived, have been proposed over the years, but the mystery has never been solved.