Rashid Johnson's mid-career retrospective, "Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers," has opened at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, filling the rotunda with paintings, sculptures, photographs, and films. Curated by Naomi Beckwith and Andrea Karnes, with Faith Hunter, the exhibition includes Johnson's well-known "Anxious Men" works alongside lesser-seen films like *Threeness* (2005), which challenge viewers' expectations. The show features recurring target motifs, as seen in the outdoor sculpture *Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos* (2008), and explores themes of looking, being looked at, and the fluidity of Black identity.
The exhibition matters because it reclaims Johnson from being narrowly defined as a market darling—his "Anxious Men" works have sold at auction for low millions—and presents him as a versatile, "post-medium" artist who has resisted monolithic interpretations for three decades. By foregrounding his least commodifiable works, particularly his films, the Guggenheim retrospective offers a more nuanced view of an artist who has deliberately remained elusive, challenging both the art market's and the museum's tendency to simplify complex practices.