Rindon Johnson’s ‘Law of Large Numbers’
A participant of the upcoming 2022 Future Generation Art Prize Exhibition in Venice, Rindon Johnson is continuously charging ahead as a poet, writer, and artist by addressing climate, race, technology, and politics, which are often intertwined. Created throughout the pandemic as a two-part collaboration with Chisenhale Gallery in London and SculptureCenter in New York, Law of Large Numbers is no exception.
Source: Spike Art Magazine.
On view at London’s Chisenhale Gallery through 6 February 2022 is Johnson's Coeval Proposition #2: Last Year's Atlantic, or You look really good, you look like you pretended like nothing ever happened, or a Weakening (2021), an immersive, live video channel that envelopes viewers into the subject matter and gallery space all at once. Both Chisenhale Gallery and SculptureCenter commissioned Johnson for the two-part exhibition, with part one titled Law of Large Numbers: Our Bodies previously exhibited at SculptureCenter in New York earlier in 2021. Law of Large Numbers: Our Selves at Chisenhale located in London's East End is part two of Johnson's exhibition, displaying a reduced quantity of work. The show's title insinuates the financial term for when a business grows too fast and sequentially self-destructs - a perfect storm - and the perfect phrase to summarise his motivations for the project.
Rindon Johnson, Coeval Proposition #2: Last Year’s Atlantic, or You look really good, you look like you pretended like nothing ever happened, or a Weakening, 2021. Installation view Chisenhale Gallery, 2021. Source: Chisenhale Gallery. Photo by Andy Keate.
Johnson's Chisenhale commission is uninterrupted footage gathered from the North Atlantic "cold blob," or the "North Atlantic warming hole (NAWH),” known to be an icy patch of water directly cooled by Greenland's melting ice sheet. The original video feed captured nearly 125 frames per second from March 2020 to January 2021. Although the gallery projector can only output 60 frames per second, about the same as the capacity of the human eye to comprehend and process images, the footage displayed each day inside the gallery coincides with the day it was recorded, creating a harmonious symmetry between the past and the present.
Rindon Johnson, Coeval Proposition #2: Last Year’s Atlantic, or You look really good, you look like you pretended like nothing ever happened, or a Weakening, 2021, real-time animation software, projectors, platform, computer, dimensions variable. Source: Chisenhale Gallery. Photo by Kyle Knodell.
South of Greenland, the "cold blob's" location is significant to Johnson's partnered commission. The pocket of crisp water is the exact midpoint between the SculptureCenter in New York and Chisenhale Gallery in London. The North Atlantic warming hole results from the surrounding water's increase in temperature from global warming and climate change by the interference of cool water with the warm waters of the Gulf Stream that unofficially denotes the triangular Atlantic trade route. As a black American artist, Atlantic Ocean trade activity has a deeply historical and emotionally charged meaning for Johnson, through which his artwork had to travel for exhibition. The faster the Greenland ice sheet melts, the larger and more disruptive the blob becomes to the surrounding water.
Rindon Johnson, Coeval Proposition #2: Last Year’s Atlantic, or You look really good, you look like you pretended like nothing ever happened, or a Weakening, 2021. Installation view Chisenhale Gallery, 2021. Source: Chisenhale Gallery. Photo by Andy Keate.
Further, Johnson is no stranger to exploring constant parallels throughout his work. The thousands of stills and copious amounts of data collected from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration through shipping reports and photography compiled for public use aggregate into this sophisticated and critical work. Using video game technology to synthesize information and fill in the gaps between data and footage, Johnson creates space for subjectivity within a single, seemingly objective work. A complex thought reduced to numbers parallels Johnson’s feelings of being a functioning member within a capitalist society that prioritizes margins and conformity. Overall, what numbers measure is a concept. To Johnson:
A number can be anything, it could be the ocean, or it could maintain itself as a number. It can be something in someone's bank account, or it can be literally nothing; just a fucking concept in my head.
In addition to being a thought-provoking artist commenting on important 21st-century topics, Johnson is also an accomplished author, with his latest book The Law of Large Numbers corresponding to the collaboration with Chisenhale. The paperback provides a more extensive peek into his thought processes while putting the exhibition together, where one can find sketches, camera notes, personal and quantitative research throughout its pages, all carried out during the conception of the work. Created in the pandemic, Law of Large Numbers timelines his creative contemplation during a period where time, much like the warming hole footage, was a blur between augmented and actual reality for most individuals.
Rindon Johnson, The Law of Large Numbers, 2021. Trade paperback, 7 x 5 in. Source: SculptureCenter.
Law of Large Numbers: Our Selves marks the Berlin-based artist's first solo exhibition in the UK. Chisenhale is offering three programming events in the final weeks of the exhibition - a panel discussion in collaboration with Afterall Art School and The Black Atlantic Museum on 27 January, followed by peer critique and an exhibition tour on 5 February.
More information on Rindon Johnson can be found here. For more information on the exhibition at Chisenhale, click here.
Reese Vandeven,
Agents of Change Co-Editor, MADE IN BED