Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers

About This Event

Johnson's third solo show at the MCA, and his biggest one yet here — 70 works spanning two decades, including the black-soap-and-wax 'Cosmic Slops' reliefs and the black-and-white photos of the fictional New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club, riffing on W.E.B. Du Bois. A real museum-scale survey, not a single-room sampler.

Johnson grew up right here, born in Chicago in 1977 to a father who worked as a multidisciplinary artist and a mother who was a poet and academic — an Afrocentric household that shaped nearly everything he'd later make art about. He trained at Columbia College Chicago and got his MFA at the School of the Art Institute, then broke through nationally at just 24, included in a landmark 2001 Studio Museum in Harlem show curated by Thelma Golden. The Cosmic Slops series that anchors this exhibition — named for a Funkadelic album — came from experimenting with African black soap melted into wax, poured into trays and carved into as it dried, a material process as much as a visual one.

Worth knowing: tickets run $22 for adults, $14 for students and seniors, free for kids — check mcachicago.org for museum hours.