{"id":2446007,"date":"2019-07-04T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-04T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=308939"},"modified":"2019-07-04T16:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-04T22:00:00","slug":"artist-rashid-johnsons-the-hikers-inspired-by-a-smuggler-mountain-walk-opens-at-aspen-art-museum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/artist-rashid-johnsons-the-hikers-inspired-by-a-smuggler-mountain-walk-opens-at-aspen-art-museum\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Rashid Johnson\u2019s \u2018The Hikers,\u2019 inspired by a Smuggler Mountain walk, opens at Aspen Art Museum"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rashid Johnson, “The HIkers,” 2019. FIlm shoot documentation. Courtesy the artist. Johnson shot the film on Smuggler Mountain in May and premiered it this week at the Aspen Art Museum. It will be on view there, in his solo exhibition, through Noember.<\/strong>
Van Wampler\/Courtesy photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

A hike up Smuggler Mountain last year led Aspen Art Museum artist-in-residence Rashid Johnson to a new film project and an unexpected leap into choreography.<\/p>\n

The multidisciplinary New York-based artist and filmmaker \u2014 also the 2018 recipient of the Aspen Award for Art<\/a> \u2014 headed up the popular local trail with museum director Heidi Zuckerman last summer. Rising above town on the dusty mountain road, he found himself compelled to spin to take it all in. He knew then that he had to make a new art film inspired by Aspen.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need the camera to be turning with you, so that you can participate in the grand, 360 quality of the landscape,\u201d Johnson explained Tuesday at the museum, where he was putting final touches on his first ballet and his solo exhibition, which opened Thursday. \u201cOn that walk, feeling my own body turn in circles, I was like \u2018Yes, film is the best way to help me capture some of that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The result is \u201cThe Hikers,\u201d a kinetic 16 mm filmed ballet depicting masked men encountering one another in the upper reaches of Smuggler. The short art film follows a far more high-profile film from Johnson, his directorial feature debut \u201cNative Son,\u201d adapted from Richard Wright\u2019s novel and broadcast on HBO this spring.<\/p>\n

The masks used in \u201cThe Hikers,\u201d on display in the solo exhibition, are based on Johnson\u2019s \u201cAnxious Men\u201d series of drawings, and the movement of the ballet follows an anxious tone with uneasy and pained movements \u2014 accentuated by some discomfiting shots of the eye-like knots in aspen trees \u2014 until a few gorgeous moments of union. Johnson shot \u201cThe Hikers\u201d on Smuggler in May.<\/p>\n

He wasn\u2019t interested in tackling the idea of \u201cAspen\u201d and its cultural baggage, with all its contradictory and often cartoonish implications. Instead, he wanted to respond to something more fundamental.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I\u2019m invested in, beyond societal expectations, is who occupies it, where it is and what it is,\u201d he said. \u201cThe protagonists in the film are granted access just to the place and its nature, just what it is, unmolested by what we would consider.\u201d<\/p>\n

The audience viewing it over the next four months in the museum might bring readings to it about class or race or, for locals, their own stories from the familiar space of Smuggler. But Johnson isn\u2019t imposing any of that himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could see the film and think about Thoreau, just walking, just interacting with nature,\u201d he said. \u201cYou could think about the ego and the id, about two characters meeting in space, about man versus himself. In that way, it transcends the Aspen-ness of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019d heard from locals that hiking Smuggler is \u201cpedestrian,\u201d that there are grander and more far-flung options beyond Aspen\u2019s most popular hike. But, he said, it felt right to set it in the town\u2019s most familiar summertime entry point to nature.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a hike that feels like a common one, and it feels like an essential walk in this place,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s gut reaction that film was the ideal medium to respond to his time echoes some of his predecessors in the museum\u2019s residency program. Film has proved a fruitful medium for the museum\u2019s resident artists going back to Javier Tellez\u2019s \u201cOedipus Marshal,\u201d shot in 2005 at Ashcroft with residents from a local psychiatric facility.<\/p>\n

The museum, on Wednesday, also hosted two live performances of the ballet \u201cThe Hikers.\u201d Created by Martha Graham Dance Co. members Lloyd Knight and Leslie Andrea Williams, and with choreographer Claudia Shreier, it marked Johnson\u2019s first dance work.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an incredible vehicle to talk about the human condition,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cNow that we are living in a world that allows artists to experiment, in a post-medium way, I want to take every bit of advantage of that. Because that\u2019s how I want to see the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, as he premiered the ballet and the hike-based film and dance piece, Johnson himself was making his way around on a knee scooter. He broke a tarsal bone in his foot while playing soccer with his son, which has left him less than mobile.<\/p>\n

The performances played out in the main gallery of the exhibition, surrounded by three newly created entries in Johnsons \u201cEscape Collage\u201d series and eight new ceramic and bronze pot works. For Johnson, 42, who began his career as a photographer but has steadily ranged further afield and drawn global acclaim for installation work and his collage-based paintings and drawings, it brought his broad interests together in a single space.<\/p>\n

In one gallery space and one film screening room, the show brings together recent strains of Johnson\u2019s work into a single statement. It continues his \u201cEscape Collage\u201d inquiry and also his \u201cAnxious Men\u201d series, along with the series of pots holding palms, cacti and succulents (Johnson informally refers to them as his \u201cpothead\u201d series). The pots each have a face on the front, also inspired by his \u201cAnxious Men\u201d characters.<\/p>\n

In each distinct body of work, there is a once a sense both of beauty and of dystopia, of natural grandeur and peace but also fear and anxiety.<\/p>\n

The \u201cEscape Collage\u201d series has been evolving for Johnson in recent years as his status as an art-world star has grown. At ArtCrush last summer, one of his \u201cEscape Collage\u201d pieces sold to Troy Carter, the tech entrepreneur and manager for Lady Gaga, for an ArtCrush record $730,000 following a bidding war between Carter and longtime museum supporter Nancy Rogers.<\/p>\n

The new \u201cEscape Collage\u201d pieces in the Aspen show intricately patch together materials like broken mirrors, masks, ceramic tiles, black soap applied in spatters and thick drips, with diamond- and eyelet-shaped images of seemingly idyllic scenes reoccurring throughout: beaches, jungles and ocean sunsets. One of the new ones created during Johnson\u2019s Aspen residency also includes embedded images of mountainscapes and snowy peaks along with a grid pattern that unmistakably mimics Shigeru Ban\u2019s woven screen exterior of the Aspen Art Museum.<\/p>\n

Two of the new works measure eight-by-10 feet. The third, which served as the backdrop to the ballet performance, measures an overwhelming 10-by-16 feet \u2014 the largest scale he\u2019s ever worked on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt keeps evolving in terms of the materials that get embedded in the work, things from my past and past bodies of work, and the palette keeps growing with landscapes and masks and different representations of space that have gotten included,\u201d he said of the \u201cEscape Collage\u201d series. \u201cWith this body of work I feel like I\u2019m in the woods, in this period of subtle developments \u2014 it\u2019s one of the most exciting developments because it speaks to my interest in seriality and how it can be manipulated.\u201d<\/p>\n

With just three major new paintings \u2014 though they are massive paintings \u2014 Johnson recognized that some might expect more work to be included in the show.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome people might think of this exhibition as being minimal,\u201d he said. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s quite maximal, because of all of the elements and pieces that have brought it to life. \u2026 It isn\u2019t necessarily crowded in the way it\u2019s resolved, but to me it\u2019s crowded in the way it\u2019s received.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show marks Johnson\u2019s first exhibition since the release of his debut feature film, an adaptation of Richard Wright\u2019s novel \u201cNative Son.\u201d It premiered in January at Sundance and was broadcast on HBO this spring.<\/p>\n

The collaborative aspect of directing a film \u2014 of depending on technical experts, writers and a cast of actors \u2014 may have led him to take the leap into dance, he suggested.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s being humbled, and learning and continuing to grow as an artist,\u201d he said. \u201cYou get to a certain stage and you have a certain familiarity with a way of working. That can be incredible and I depend on that in my studio \u2014 just my knowledge of 20-plus years being trapped in a room with a bunch of materials and having to figure my way out of it. That labor is important to me in my practice and always will be, but to continue to discover ways of working and ways of seeing, where I\u2019m less familiar, can be really effective.\u201d<\/p>\n

He recalled the delighted surprise with which \u201cNative Son\u201d director of photography Matthew Libatique \u2014 the revered cinematographer behind Darren Aronofsky\u2019s films and last year\u2019s \u201cA Star is Born\u201d \u2014 received his visual ideas for the film.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s born out of my naivet\u00e9, not my creativity,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cIt\u2019s just that I\u2019m willing to do something outside of the parameters that a lot of filmmakers would employ.\u201d<\/p>\n

While making \u201cNative Son,\u201d he recalled, members of the cast and the Hollywood crowd would ask him what feature film he was making next. They were a bit baffled when he said he was making an exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum instead of pushing to make another feature film. But he may direct another feature, he said, if he finds the right subject.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen there is something that needs to be translated on film, when there is another thing that piques my interest that I think will best be resolved through a feature film, I wouldn\u2019t hesitate to make another,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

atravers@aspentimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rashid Johnson, “The HIkers,” 2019. FIlm shoot documentation. Courtesy the artist. Johnson shot the film on Smuggler Mountain in May and premiered it this week at the Aspen Art Museum. It will be on view there, in his solo exhibition, through Noember.Van Wampler\/Courtesy photo A hike up Smuggler Mountain last year led Aspen Art Museum […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2446007","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-20 20:14:39","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2446007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2446007\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2446007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2446007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2446007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}