Rashid Johnson targets notions of origin in a show at Athens' George Economou Collection Space

African American artist Rashid Johnson uses paintings, sculpture, photography, video and found objects - including books and records - to explore questions of identity and particularly the legacy of afro-centrism. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth; photography by Fanis Vlastaras and Rebecca Constantopoulou

(Image credit: Fanis Vlastaras and Rebecca Constantopoulou)

By Nick Compton

last updated 31 August 2022

in Features

Private galleries are becoming ever more serious about going public, increasingly hiring highly credentialed curators to put together 'museum quality' exhibitions. The enormous new Paris home for François Pinault's private haul, opening this autumn, ups the ante considerably. Athens' George Economou Collection is more modest in scale but sharp of focus.

A local shipping magnate, Economou began collecting in the 1990s, quickly assembling one of the world's best collections of German Expressionism - the Hermitage even turned to him to plug some their gaps in a recent exhibition - before adding more contemporary works. His gallery now puts on two or three shows a year, always with the involvement of international curatorial talent. The latest is 'Magic Numbers', a solo exhibition by the young African American artist Rashid Johnson.

Born in Chicago, Johnson uses paintings, sculpture, photography, video and found objects - including books and records - to explore questions of identity and particularly the legacy of afro-centrism. Recent works have taken a more abstract turn, using materials such as burned wood, cast bronze, black soap and wax.

The centrepiece of 'Magic Numbers', curated by Johnson in collaboration with Katherine Brinson, associate curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Skarlet Smatana, director of the Economou Collection, is the film 'The New Black Yoga' (2011), which is almost exactly what you would expect: footage of a group of black men doing yoga on a beach. Around this Johnson, whose installations always suggest the domestic and a kind of origin story, has grouped a series of new paintings and sculptures.

The centrepiece of his show 'Magic Numbers' is the film 'The New Black Yoga' (2011), which is almost exactly what you would expect - footage of a group of black men doing yoga on a beach (Image credit: TBC)

A still from 'The New Black Yoga' (Image credit: TBC)

The video begins and ends with the image of a gun’s crosshairs – a symbol appropriated from the logo of hip-hop group Public Enemy - and is echoed in the oriental carpets placed adjacent to the projection (Image credit: TBC)

'Shea Butter Landscape', 2014. Around this work, Johnson - whose installations always suggest the domestic and a kind of origin story - has grouped a series of new paintings and sculptures (Image credit: TBC)

Black paint splashes on beige background — '1,2,4', 2013. Recent works have taken an abstract turn, using materials such as burned wood, cast bronze, black soap and wax (Image credit: TBC)

Johnson&rsquo;s sculpture 'Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos', 2012 — The crosshairs motif reappears in the final gallery, where Johnson’s sculpture 'Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos', 2012, is both a stark symbol of aggression and a composed study in geometric forms (Image credit: TBC)

'Good King', 2013 - covering the back wall of the gallery - is the largest example to date of one of the artist's characteristic patchworks of found objects (Image credit: TBC)

This monumental work is paired with a monochrome composition from Johnson's 2013 'Cosmic Slop' series (Image credit: TBC)

ADDRESS

The George Economou Collection Space
80, Kifissias Avenue
15125 Marousi
Athens

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