News

May 22, 2025 • Bergen, Norway • 22 May 2025 - 17 August 2025

Find Spot at Bergen Kunsthall

Bergen Kunsthall is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Rindon Johnson, running concurrently with the festival exhibition 2025. Johnson, an artist and poet, explores how language, materiality, and space shape perception and value, informed by history, economics, and the limits of language. For this exhibition Johnson presents works that extend his ongoing investigations into autonomy, surveillance, and material histories. The title, drawn from archaeology, reflects how meaning is shaped by context and discovery.

February 28, 2025 • Exporuimte Cc Strombeek • 28 February - 5 May 2025

Why tell a dead man the future

For his exhibition at CC Strombeek, Johnson will explore the history and implications of the fabled wood type mahogany and its contemporary usage, for instance in furniture. A valued material, mahogany has passed through many hands, yet the islands where it grows bear the scars of its absence, left vulnerable by the loss of these protective trees.

September 21, 2024 • Shanghai, China • 21 September 2024

Best Synthetic Answer @ Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai

Best Synthetic Answer will open on September 21st, 2024.

May 1, 2024 • Online

Symbiosis Hypnosis

Rindon Johnson’s Symbiosis Hypnosis is a video game grounded in the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis’ (1938-2011) symbiosis theories. Margulis provided valuable theories about the evolution of life and the origin of modern cells challenging central tenets of neo-Darwinism. She argued that inherited variation, significant in evolution, does not come mainly from random mutations, rather, new tissues, organs, and even new species evolve primarily through the long-lasting intimacy of strangers. She suggests that the fusion of genomes in symbioses followed by natural selection leads to increasingly complex levels of individuality.

February 1, 2024 • Venice • 20 April 2024 - 24 November 2024

Biennale Arte 2024: Stranieri Ovunque - Foreigners Everywhere

Rindon Johnson has been invited to Biennale Arte 2024 curated by Adriano Pedrosa.

January 2, 2024 • New Museum Theater, NYC • 27 January, 1:30pm - 6pm

Rhizome and the New Museum Announce Participants for 7x7 2024 Presented by Hyundai Motor

The 2024 edition will focus on AI and is co-organized by Michael Connor, Co-Executive Director of Rhizome, and Xinran Yuan, independent curator and producer. The first in-person edition to be held since 2019, 7x7 2024 draws together creative pairings from across disciplines. The collaborators will consider how AI may alter our understanding of love, humor, and improvisation; biology, politics, and histories.

September 13, 2023 • rudi-dutschke-strasse 26, berlin • 13 September 2023, 6-9pm

five

New solo exhibition @ Max Goeltiz, Berlin

June 30, 2023 • World Weather Network • June 2023

We can leave anytime, day or night (let us begin we have much further to go)

For Les lichens ne mentent jamais / Lichens Never Lie, Rindon Johnson presents “We can leave anytime, day or night (let us begin we have much further to go)”. In this text-based work, created with the aid of an AI voice, he intertwines components of artificial intelligence and lichens to confront climate change, addressing them not as opposites to be engaged with on separate horizons but as potential tools to inform one another.

June 1, 2023 • 1 June, 2023

Notes on Transshipment on MoMA Post

New Essay: What happens when we cross over to the other side? In relation to the phenomenon of transshipment – the risky and at times illicit practice of transferring cargo from one ship to another – artist and poet Rindon Johnson ruminates on borders and bodies that remain in flux.

October 4, 2022 • 4 October 2022

Artists Talk: Cuvier - The New Social Environment, Brooklyn Rail

Artist Rindon Johnson joins Rail contributor Ksenia M. Soboleva for a conversation. We conclude with a poetry reading.

September 7, 2022 • 391 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002 • 7 September - 15 October

Cuvier

An exhibition in homage to the Cuvier's beaked whale, Ziphius cavirostris, featuring new sculptures in stained glass, a work in cow leather and bleach exposed to the elements, and a new video game that places players in the perceptual apparatus of the whale. 

August 26, 2022 • Hobrechtstrasse 31, 12047 Berlin - Back Hof • August 26 - September 24

Give Chase @ GUTS

An installation and choreography of new works in leather, furniture and mirror @ GUTS

August 26, 2022 • Dresden, Germany • 26 August - 27 November 2022

Ernst-Rietschel-Kunstpreis für Skulptur 2022

Exhibition in Dresden opening 25 August where I'll present new works for the occasion of winning the Ernst-Rietschel-Kunstpreis für Skulptur 2022

June 30, 2022 • 30 June 2022

Reading: Elizabeth A. Povinelli & Rindon Johnson - Futures, maps, memories, meanderings

A collaboration between the Critical Poetics Research Group at Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham Contemporary, this series of talks and readings investigates poetic ecologies in the Anthropocene. Exploring ideas from weeds and water to eco-trauma and deep time, and featuring some of the most important international creative-critical voices working today, the talks and readings aim to open up new conversations about entanglement, coexistence, resilience and sustainability.

June 20, 2022 • Vleeshal, The Netherlands • July 16 - September 11

‘Some of It Falls from the Belt and Lands on the Walkway Beside the Conveyor’

Curated by Yaby. Participating artists are Aria Dean, Christopher Aque, Claudia Pagès and Rindon Johnson.

April 6, 2022 • Whitney Museum, New York • 6 April - 5 September 2022

Whitney Biennial: Quiet as it's Kept

Titled Quiet as It’s Kept, the 2022 Biennial features an intergenerational and interdisciplinary group of sixty-three artists and collectives whose dynamic works reflect the challenges, complexities, and possibilities of the American experience today.

February 16, 2022 • Hammer Museum, Los Angeles USA • 16 February - 8 May 2022

Lifes

Lifes is conceived as a durational sequence that unfolds over time. A cycle of audio, video, and live performance repeats at the top of each hour, but there is no singular or optimal way to experience the exhibition. Intermittent dance and music performances interrupt the implied stability of the schedule. The whole assembly becomes an orchestrated cacophony of disparate parts and competing interests. Any moments of dissonance that arise within the container of the exhibition reflect the lived conditions and working methods of artists across disciplines.