five | rindon johnson

The novel Clattering is created in collaboration with writer Rainer Diana Hamilton and challenges our accustomed view of relationships, hierarchical structures and systems of reproduction. In Clattering, there is no gender, hunger, war, or physical violence, and yet certain feelings and emotion remain familiar and intensely palpable.

On the occasion of the exhibition, five, the first 40 pages of the novel were published, providing a glimpse into the literary underpinnings of Johnson’s works. 

Johnson's artistic practice expands his writing into spatial installations that incorporate various elements or media. In the novel, Sima, one of the five main protagonists, masters the craft of glass and dreams of expanding on its capabilities. The three-panel glass window Clattering is a manifestation of Sima's window that bridges the gap between fiction and reality by blurring the boundaries between narrative and physical image.

The sculpture Fruit of the poisonous tree, Higher and more free! [...] (2023) is made of ash wood and acts as a handrail leading into the exhibition. As infrastructure, it serves as a support while blocking direct access into the space. Johnson's recurring architectural interventions reflect social systems and their physical manifestations in space, referencing inequalities and exclusionary qualities. He addresses the consequences of these conventions and the underrepresentation of particular social groups in social structures. By guiding viewers through the exhibition in a performative act, he allows them to specifically experience the manipulation of architecture – such as the influence of a wall in the room or the opening Examples: laughter in the morning and tears in the afternoon [...] to the outside. Johnson creates a procession through the exhibition in which he breaks down convention. The asymmetrical geometric structure of the sculpture is based on the number five, which Johnson and Hamilton use as the basis of the novel Clattering to describe the multiplicity of possibilities and a collectivity beyond our familiar binary. In the science fiction novel, five characters are necessary to create offspring.

Beyond the pines, pines, pines, pines [...] (2023) is a wall stacked from used bricks that extends through the space like a wave. Johnson is referring both to Sol Lewitt's walls in the "Hoffman Garden" in Dallas and to the vernacular of crinkle crankle walls in the UK. While Lewitt pursued this form to follow the roots of the oak trees in the garden, the walls were originally used because they required less bricks due to their serpentine structure. Dissolving architecture as a purely screening element that defines an inside and an outside, Johnson was interested in these parallel forms and the possibility that he might take them to continue his questioning of belonging and demarcation. These walls sometimes evoke associations with themes such as migration and surveillance but they also might simply mark, over here and over there. Johnson reflects on the effects of spatial design on how we feel and behave, questioning how we fit into and find ourselves within these larger structures. Johnson pulls this form indoors as both a tool and a taunt; boundaries to the artist are both artificial and inherently fragile. 

Now you tell me. Like always, so much depends on a single white chicken in the orchard. [...] (2023) consists of five screens that transmit live streams of varying airport runways from around the world. International air traffic can be followed 24 hours a day, placing the viewer in a voyeuristic position of witnessing the constant movement and interconnectedness of our globalized world. Again, the artist chooses to cut into another reality where events can be observed, but the visitors stand outside these events. Akin to the consideration of the open window and the brick wall, these aggregated live streams examine the implicit fictions that influence our view of socioeconomic systems. Now you tell me. [...] symbolizes the contemporary capitalist narrative that time is too scarce to pay attention to the consequences of saving it: the permanent interconnection of places through air travel takes precedence over the well-being of the planet and a sustainable approach to it.

Paths wind through woods. Dogs chase their tails. [...] (2023) is a freestanding sculpture made of leather, in which Johnson works the hide on both sides and stretches it into a frame made of ash wood. At first glance, the anthracite-colored surface of the leather looks like a chalkboard that can be rewritten over and over again. The use of cowhide as the basis of the drawing also evokes associations with parchment – the predecessor of paper – in which a thin animal skin has been used as writing material since ancient times. Here the cowhide becomes sculpture, painting, and at the same time, an architectural element. However, the leather is not only a canvas, but it also symbolizes the cultural influence of the animal material. With the choice of material, Johnson takes on the skins and, through their presentation, refers to the multifaceted resource and the resulting subjugation, neglect, and interchangeability of living creatures by humans. The actual act of skinning, a violent transgression of bodily boundaries, exemplifies this form of objectification. Johnson's works in leather underscore the recognition of animals' agency and question the ethics and sustainability of our profit-driven interests in relation to animal products. At the same time, Paths wind through woods. Dogs chase their tails. [...] transfers these questions to identity politics, class issues, and practices of racial exploitation.

Johnson's detailed work titles poetically raise additional questions regarding autonomy and power that embed the artist's linguistic dexterity as a textual extension. Johnson's reflections always start from the possibilities and quality of language, and find their influence in the form of the titles that accompany the works like poems. They are an essential part of the work and, drawn by the artist's subjective impressions, they elude unambiguous readability through deliberate ambivalences.