In recent years, Rashid Johnson’s paintings of gridded, wide-eyed faces shaped with looping calligraphic strokes respond with all the awe, horror, and wonder that the present may evoke. Made during the COVID-19 pandemic and with haunting specters of racial disparity in mind, the artist’s Bruise Paintings use the tonality of a subdermal wound to summon, as the artist notes, “What it felt like to be living after a blunt force trauma of some sort.” The black-and-blue hues shift like a bruise—a metaphor for a body and soul still healing in unpredictable times.

Oil on linen.

Museum purchase with funds donated by Sandy and Paul Edgerley. © Rashid Johnson, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

2023.133