Rindon Johnson

Whatever the flavor of Beyoncé’s Oshun-inspired awokening, we continue to drown. “Circumscribe,” Rindon Johnson’s first institutional solo show in Europe, conjures a panorama of a Black afterlife aquatic. Cleverly exploiting the venue’s transparent partitions, he submerges us in a multimedia environment that weaves together videos, objects, texts, and sounds. Though bodies, human or otherwise, are present in works such as the video It is April (JSC) (all works cited, 2019) and the virtual reality installation Diana Said, what stands out are the traces of their labor. The hides of cows—a species once native to the Near East, now cultivated worldwide—are stretched into monochrome canvas or suspended in space. Fragments of serpentine stone from Zimbabwe—a rock with ostensible healing properties coveted since antiquity—repose at the bottom of Rhine-water aquariums. In an age when the futurity of living labor feels ever more precarious, perhaps these curious commodities are destined to become the true inheritors of our globalized world.

Meanwhile, large-format projections bathe visitors in watery light. VR installations, live feeds, and digital videos open virtual vistas onto elsewhere: post-processed images of aquatic undergrowth and submarine alpine landscapes. Each scene comes replete with a lengthy wall text turned monologue. According to the press release, language here “tests the self-sufficiency of the artwork.” Indeed, it often finds the artworks wanting, as the alchemy holding the show together functions mostly on the level of syntax. Visitors can expect to spend more time reading than looking, and with the exception of the film Among other things . . . , there is hardly a single piece that rewards sustained viewing. Instead, they remain larger-than-life fragments in an immersive montage that prompts a flicker of recognition, often passing as soon as we arrive.