Standing Broken Men

2021

Rashid Johnson

(American, b. 1977)

Culture

America

Medium

Ceramic tile, mirror tile, branded red oak, bronze, spray enamel, oil stick, black soap, wax

Measurements

240.7 x 186.7 x 7.6 cm (94 3/4 x 73 1/2 x 3 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Agnes Gund in honor of Helena Huang 2021.161

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

229A Contemporary

Did You Know?

Standing Broken Men is composed of fine art and organic materials, all of which are common throughout Rashid Johnson’s work.

Description

At the center of a frenzied mosaic, an abstract, fractured figure stares, wide-eyed, out at the viewer. Standing Broken Men and a related series of mixed-media mosaic works grew out of Johnson’s Anxious Men and Anxious Audiences series (2015–18) in which the artist used frantic marks to render abstracted faces in gridded formations. As Standing Broken Men exemplifies, Johnson continues to make vivid the experience of anxiety, now composing figures through fragmented shards. Through this technique, brokenness is inherent in the figures and the pictorial worlds they inhabit. However, their pieces are reassembled into dynamic colorful wholes, suggesting the possibility for healing and renewal.

$Frenzied mosaic made up of multi-color fractured tiles with predominantly square, black tiles outlining the square head and shoulders of a central figure. Solid oval eyes and a rectangular mouth occupy most of the face with colorful tiles cutting in, particularly green squares in the mouth. Below the shoulders dissolve into reds, blues, and yellows with predominantly white tiles making up the figure's background. Red, yellow, teal, and black wax scrawls over the tiles.$