Poetic HARMONY

With “A Poem for Deep Thinkers” at the Guggenheim Museum, RASHID JOHNSON revisits his archive

- ARIMETA DIOP

ARTIST RASHID JOHNSON has recently let the light in, renovating the ceilings of his Brooklyn studio to flood the space via skylight. “A Poem for Deep Thinkers,” the largest exhibition of Johnson’s work to date, does something similar, as the Guggenheim spotlights his multidisciplinary practice over the course of his three-decade career.

Filling the museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed rotunda, the career survey features nearly 90 works exploring themes of self-examination, liminal space, and legacy in what Johnson calls an “investigation of my own experiences and ideas and understanding of the world.”

The exhibit, which includes black-soap paintings, large-scale indoor and outdoor sculpture, film, and video, takes its name from a poem by the late writer and political activist Amiri Baraka, whose presence looms large in Johnson’s oeuvre.