'My intention is for an artwork to be able to be read as an object that’s dealing with the antecedent in art history, that’s dealing with how mark-making, gesture, and material have existed historically and a lot of what I do is a response to that. There’s a second kind of component, maybe a little more rigorous one in which I begin to think conceptually about how those materials, marks, gestures and ideas in my hand become different then artist’s who may have employed similar things in the past.'
—Rashid Johnson