David L. Johnson
June 2, 2026

This week on the Selection Committee Radio Show I welcome the fascinating artist and educator David L. Johnson whose work is currently on view in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Johnson grew up in Manhattan, and New York City’s public and private spaces, methods of dominance and control, and irrepressible sociality are continual sources of inspiration for his challenging and legally ambiguous work. Johnson was a student at the Cooper Union when Occupy Wall Street camped out in Zuccotti Park. Fascinated by the complex legal status of the park as a privately owned public space (or POPS), Johnson began investigating how private real estate companies negotiate the privileges of operating these spaces with the challenges of managing the public—sometimes with the assistance of the state.

“Rule,” 2024-ongoing, is a series of purloined signs outlining codes of conduct from various POPS around the city. Each sign is unique in form and content, interdicting behavior ranging from the criminal, to the merely annoying, to the protected (distribution of literature). By removing the signs, which must be visible in order to be enforceable, Johnson creates a space for the return to greater freedom.

Johnson brings a great selection of music for the show, including two tracks that are excerpts from a collection of cassette tapes his late father made by recording radio broadcasts. For his series of 2025 video sculptures called “Cleveland’s Mix(es),” Johnson replayed a tape in a POPS on one of his father’s boom boxes. The resulting object is a portrait of a stereo returning the radio and a sense of sociality to the public sphere.

We talk about the ramifications of working in between public and private spaces and the relationship his work has to performance and to artists like Dennis Oppenheim and David Hammons. We also discuss early 2000s hip hop, landlords, and audible deterrents designed to be heard only by people under 25. It’s a captivating show!

Complete playlist below; tracks in yellow were cut for time.

1. One Piece at a Time, Johnny Cash
   
2. It Fell Off the Back of a Lorry, Denim
   
3. Iron Galaxy, Cannibal Ox
   
4. Laws, Apani B Fly feat Nujabes
   
5. Cleveland_s Mix (Random) - Excerpt   
   
6. Cleveland_s Mix (The Quiet Touch) - Excerpt   
   
7. Panamanian Fight Song (Lyric Video), Irreversible Entanglements
   
8. Cold Sweat, Billy Woods
   
9. Scarcity Is Manufactured, Deerhoof
   
10. Guapa, Juan Wauters
    
11. Song, Tom Verlaine
    
12. Sweetheart (Live), Suicide
    
13. Gertrude Stein, Ed Askew
14. 4 American Dollars, U.S. Girls
15. My Contribution to This Scam, Jean Grae & Quelle Chris
16. Catalogue demo take, Cities Aviv
17. City Hell, Jockstrap
18. It's O.K., Dead Moon

David L. Johnson makes work attuned to the streets of the city, pinpointing moments of slippage between public and private property. His practice utilizes photography, video, found and stolen objects, and sound to consider the politics, histories, aesthetics, and forms of use that define contemporary urban space.

David L. Johnson (b. 1993, New York, NY) lives and works in New York City. Recent solo and dual exhibitions include: Fanta MLN, Milan (2025); The Shop at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2024); Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin; Galerie Noah Klink, Berlin; Art Lot, Brooklyn (all 2023); and Theta, New York (2021). Recent group exhibitions include: The Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2026); Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg (both 2024); Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago; MoMA PS1, New York (all 2023); and Artists Space, New York (2022). Johnson received a BFA from The Cooper Union in 2015 and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020. He is an alumnus of the Whitney Independent Study Program and is a part-time faculty member at Parsons MFA and an adjunct professor at The Cooper Union. Johnson’s work is held in the public collection of The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Columbus Museum of Art.