Johnson’s success was cemented in 2001 when his work, was included in Freestyle, a landmark exhibition staged at New York’s Studio Museum Harlem. The museum was founded in 1968 with the intention of being a space for artists of African descent to create and engage with art that is inspired and influenced by Black culture and shown work. Put together by Thelma Golden, the museum’s esteemed director and chief curator, Freestyle included three striking and intimate photographic portraits by Johnson of a homeless black man in his hometown of Chicago. Golden staged the exhibition to address the question of what it meant to be Black at that time, deeming the group of participating artists “post-Black”, a term classifying a genre of art which is about the Black experience, but rejects the concept of race as its defining factor. Many artists featured at the exhibition, including Julie Meheretu, Sanford Biggers and Mark Bradford, are now incredibly successful, both critically and commercially.

While he started out as a photographer, Johnson quickly built up a diverse body of work across a range of media: film, installation, and most recently painting. He made his feature film directorial debut with Native Son (2019), receiving favourable reviews and acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, and reaching an audience beyond his artistic practice. Adapted from the novel of the same name by Richard Wright, the film follows the main character, a young African American man living in Chicago, who enters the enticing world of power and money after being hired as a chauffeur for an affluent businessman. It showcases complex race relations in the US and the range of diverse characters within the Black population beyond the stereotypes typically represented on screen. Johnson’s excavation of multiple perspectives is a significant contribution to racial discourse in the US, one that has extended the scope of his resonance and popularity beyond the art world and has morphed him into a broader cultural figure.

In Asia, his work is less well known; Nudiustertian will serve as his introduction to most, and will feature the most recent iterations of his Anxious Men, Bruise, Surrender, Boat and Seascape painting series. Each series evolved from the one before it—Anxious Men was the first—providing a visual cohesion that is the result of Johnson’s own introspective look at the experience of anxiety.

The artist began painting Anxious Men in 2015, in large part due to the upheaval taking place in the US at that time. But he started focusing more on painting during the pandemic, when he was “given the space to explore a medium that so much has already been done with”. He also found it to be a form of meditation, from which, perhaps, solutions could emerge. “Now, I feel like there’s an opportunity in the world for peace and for meditation and for a different kind of cathartic resolve.”

He first revisited the Anxious Men series, which then led to the Seascape, Bruise and Surrender paintings. The intensity dissipates as the series transition: the urgency of the anxious reds cools down into melancholic blues and blacks in the Bruise series; colour seeps out from the Surrender paintings, which are made with white paint on linen, the visible motifs resemble ghostlike faces, which to the artist denote acceptance and recognition—a metaphorical surrender. A sense of rawness emanates from the expressive urgency with which continuously looped strokes are painted across canvases. “Anxiety has had such an enormous effect on my project”, the artist says. “This time I preferred to illustrate [that] feeling versus the all the events that were happening around me that led to this feeling.” 

Developed in 2014, just a year before the Anxious Men series and triggered by the artist’s turn to sobriety, the Broken Men series, consisting of colourful mosaic pieces, will also be on view at his Hong Kong show. The pieces reveal a similar vulnerability to those in Anxious Men, a quality that stands in stark contrast to more traditional, and toxic, definitions of strength. Featuring shattered fragments of ceramic tiles re-arranged to form masculine figures, the works envisage the metaphorical collation of shattered fragments that can be interpreted as masculinity, humanity and society at large, pieced back together for the possibility of reconciliation.

While Johnson’s paintings are created with the usual products, his previous works in sculpture and installation were produced from a range of unconventional materials, such as shea butter and African black soap, the histories of which struck a chord with the artist and impelled him to examine how he perceived and used them in his own life. A trip to West Africa when he was 19 led him to rediscover these materials known for their nourishing and healing properties. African black soap, which originated in that region, is made from the ash of local plants and dried fruit peel, and is known for its deep cleansing and moisturising properties for sensitive skin; it can also contain shea butter, another product popularly used to moisturise, heal and protect skin. “I think about [such substances] as metaphors for sensitivity and care”, Johnson says. “I’m also thinking about scarring, and the complicated history of being made to feel uncomfortable, and the tools and materials that we had in the world that brought comfort.” His use of these materials offered a physical representation of themes he addresses through his work: healing, solace, the Black body and Black culture.

Johnson considers his artistic and introspective approach to his practice to be a constructive step towards and a basis on which to connect with people and understand one’s place in society. “To evolve in awareness and be conscious and willing are at the forefront of how you think of your relationship to the world”, he says.

Johnson believes that understanding and compassion beyond tolerance are crucial to creating a viable future for all. “You have to learn to love people who see the world differently than you, and be able to disagree with them, but from a place of respect.” And he hopes that, through his work, he can make a difference, and encourage people who view his art to come around to this way of thinking. After all, at the core of his work, he has an urgent and primal enquiry: “How do we make space for love? I know it sounds cheesy and ridiculous, but I think it’s the most pressing issue we are facing.”

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