Born by the River

What was once a mundane oak floor transgresses its original form and takes on a mystical, otherworldly appearance; now, alien-like hieroglyphs and hastily made engravings cover the surface of Rashid Johnson’s Born by the River. The geometric symbols scarred into the floorboard are a brilliant heaven of semiotics—one that escapes known systems of references. By conjuring the unknown, the occult, and mysticism, the artist evokes his desire to transform and expand our field of association in the process of reception.

At the same time, Born by the River is the manifestation of Johnson’s interest in abstraction and the constructed object, as he attempts to find new ways of intervening the material and “make a mark.” He developed a technique by which he melts down black soap and wax in large bath, then intuitively draws improvised motives onto a surface. Once the liquid has hardened, Johnson rebrands the areas with a hot iron, redirecting their form to create new typographies. What does an object become when it no longer functions the way it was originally intended? Through the use of ordinary floorboards we are taken back to our past homes, but Johnson endows the object with a new history that oscillates between artistic process and cultural investigation.