After a Zoe Leonard online exhibition, the Hauser & Wirth gallery is presenting an exhibition by American artist Rashid Johnson starting today. Titled Untitled Anxious Red Drawings, the online show concentrates on new works made by the artist during the quarantine we’ve all been experiencing since the middle of March. This has been a strange and unprecedented time when many have taken the time to reflect on themselves, their art, but also started nourishing a certain anguish facing the uncertainty of the future, the passing of time and a fear for their general health. In these time, we turn to artists, searching for meaning and a different take on the world we are living in. Using oil stick on cotton rag paper, Johnson has given a slight update on the visual language of his famous « Anxious Men » series, where distorted faces give away the tensions and traumas of our lives. This time, instead of using his signature black wax, he adopted a blood red color, perhaps to signify the urgency of this period of time, our scattered emotions and blood-pumping anxious hearts.

All the drawings are more abstract than his usual work, concentrating on pure bold color application in endless frenetical motifs with very little space to breathe. It is the perfect translation of a violent shift in society that is bound to impact the way we go on living. A moment of solitude, pain and uncertainty that can also be the catalyst of a new way of thinking.

Rashid Johnson has also decided 10% of the proceeds of the sales from this exhibition to the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization, matching Hauser & Wirth’s commitment to support the Fund through donation of 10% of its gross profits from all online exhibitions, as part of the gallery’s ongoing #artforbetter initiative.

Discover the exhibition on the Hauser & Wirth website today at 4 PM (UTC+2)