It's Rashid Johnson's third solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art and features more than 70 artworks that were produced over a roughly three-decade span.
"This is the largest and most comprehensive survey of his practice to date," said Jack Schneider, MCA Assistant Curator.
Schneider worked with Johnson, who grew up in Evanston, to adapt the exhibition titled: "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers" to the MCA, following its shows at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
"That included supplementing the checklist with a few objects, and then of course fitting it into our architecture, which is really the biggest task, and I think kind of presented the most opportunities to put different pieces in conversation with one another," he said.
Schneider said the exhibition includes everything from Johnson's early experimental photographs to video work, sculptures and his more recent paintings.
"The most concise way I've heard him describe his practice is when he said, 'The subject of my work is freedom,'" Schneider said.
He said Johnson does this by referencing people like Frederick Douglass and different civil rights icons, along with other artists and musicians.
"I think you also see him in his own practice almost kind of performing a sense of freedom," he said. "I think primarily in the way that he refuses to work in any particular medium, and he really just moves freely across various media."
He said one of the highlights of the exhibition is a work called "Antoine's Organ," which includes different materials Johnson has used in his works.
"It also features a ton of live plants and right in the center of the installation is a piano," he said.
That piano will be activated by various performers throughout the exhibition's run. Schneider said the piece, in a way, keeps the exhibit alive.
"There's this joke that museums are like graveyards for artwork. It's where things go to die," he said. "I think with his work, with the inclusion of plants and various other materials that do change over time, these pieces are alive and evolving."
"Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers" is on view through April 25, 2027.
