Hauser & Wirth is pleased to present Birthday Boys, an exhibition by Rashid Johnson, in New York.
November 3, 2026 – January 16, 2027
In the film, Johnson draws on the idea of mirroring to reflect on the shifting relationship between father and son over time, particularly as a child moves into adolescence and increasingly asserts his own identity and prerogatives. The title carries a personal significance for Johnson, who shares his birthday with his son. The work takes as a point of departure the concept of The Mirror Stage, first developed by psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to describe a child’s early recognition of himself as a distinct individual.
The four ‘Broken Soul’ mosaics on view explore these same ideas through the materiality and visual language of the medium. Using mosaic allows Johnson to construct images of apparent unity from disparate pieces, holding together elements that remain distinct even as they form a larger whole. Each new work here features two heads assembled from various fragments of tile and other materials, bringing unique shapes into close proximity. The figures appear intertwined, at times competing for space within the frame, their contours and features merging in ways that make it difficult to determine where one ends and the other begins.
The exhibition also introduces a group of suspended sculptural figures whose elongated, precarious forms suggest bodies caught between movement and collapse. Drawing on the suspended compositions of Alexander Calder and the expressive physicality of Auguste Rodin, these works negotiate a tension between weightlessness and exhaustion, their awkward, seemingly falling gestures evoking both the vulnerability of the body and the emotional complexity of holding oneself––and others––together.
Together, these bodies of work negotiate the relationship between intimacy and independence, suggesting that closeness need not depend on sameness. Instead, the recognition of another person’s uniqueness can become its own expression of attachment. ‘Birthday Boys’ ultimately considers the challenge of allowing someone you love to become fully themselves, beyond the expectations and reflections that first bound you together.