New Rashid Johnson Exhibition, THE CHORUS, Now on View at the Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera unveiled two new, monumental mosaics by the American artist Rashid Johnson as part of an exhibition titled The Chorus, which are now on view inside the opera house and displayed on the Grand Tier and Dress Circle levels. The work is part of the Met's long-running visual arts initiative, Gallery Met, and will be on display throughout the 2021-22 season.

The Chorus features two large-scale mosaics, each titled The Broken Nine (2020 and 2021). Known for using a range of materials across various mediums, Johnson's The Broken Nine mosaics include materials such as ceramic tile, mirror tile, oyster shells, spray enamel, bronze, oil stick, branded red oak, black soap, and wax.

"Rashid is at the forefront of a new generation of artists," said Gallery Met director Dodie Kazanjian. "Rashid is an artist who goes all out on everything he does. He thinks on a scale that is operatic. I wanted to see how his enormous talent would assert itself at the Met-in company with Chagall, Maillol, and Netrebko."

For more information about Gallery Met, please click here.

About Rashid Johnson

Born in Chicago in 1977, Rashid Johnson is among an influential cadre of contemporary American artists whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, philosophy, materiality, and critical history. After studying in the photography department of the Art Institute of Chicago, Johnson's practice quickly expanded to embrace a wide range of media-including sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation-yielding a complex multidisciplinary practice that incorporates diverse materials rich with symbolism and personal history.

Johnson's work is known for its narrative embedding of a pointed range of everyday materials and objects, often associated with his childhood and frequently referencing collective aspects of African American intellectual history and cultural identity. To date, Johnson has incorporated elements / materials / items as diverse as CB radios, shea butter, literature, record covers, gilded rocks, black soap and tropical plants. Many of Johnson's works convey rhythms of the occult and mystic: evoking his desire to transform and expand each included object's field of association in the process of reception.

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