Table  

‘Title’ (2024) is a site specific artwork and functional object, specially commissioned for Manuela, New York. At seven meters long and oval-shaped, Johnson’s first table, ‘Title’ seats twenty-four diners. With a mosaic surface comprised of handmade artisanal and industrial tiles, spray paint and smashed mirrors, ‘Title’s collage-like composition, cracked colors and abstracted faces recall Johnson’s ‘Anxious Men’ and ‘Broken Men’ series, in which the human figure is pushed to breaking point. Within these bustling compositions, rudimentary renderings of the human face are brought to the fore, their wild and agitated expressions speaking to both individual and collective identities against shifting social realities. Of these earlier works, Johnson has said, “I’m trying to illustrate tons of different people and at the same time they’re probably all me”.   

Rug  

Rashid Johnson’s ‘Title’ (2024), is a site-specific rug created in close partnership with Tessere, a bespoke carpet design firm based in the UK. Designed in an oval shape to mirror the structure of Manuela’s private dining room, ‘Title’ borrows its striking visuals from Johnson’s ‘God Painting “A New Day”’ (2023), an abstract and almost geometric work that takes liminality and rebirth as its subjects. Depicting a series of almond shapes impressed in white into deep crimson, the image plays with the intersection of overlapping circles, and solidifies the liminal spaces that are conjured between. Also recalling eyes turned on their sides, the motif provides a nod to the reverence Johnson holds for things he cannot explain but feels inside, and is a powerful new addition to his visual lexicon. On the painting, Johnson says, “I happened to be outside one day laying with my family. I closed my eyes and I was looking up at the sun. It was a warm day. I saw this red behind my eyes and I said to myself, this is incredibly simple: I’m going to call that thing God.”  

Specially commissioned for Manuela, Mary Heilmann’s tables (2024) present a throughline to the artist’s longstanding interest in ceramics, furniture, and what she calls “home arts”. Situated throughout the restaurant’s bar and dining areas, Heilmann’s fifty-one tables exist in three colorways (red, yellow, green), and two shapes (square and round), with a modular design that can be combined to suit a range of groups. As a painter and ceramicist, Heilmann’s playful approach to color and geometric form is evident throughout the works, whose molded inlays are carved and placed with the utmost precision.

Each table is topped with a tinted and treated oak surface that has been painstakingly milled on a CNC router to cup around the ceramic panels, which are comprised of grout and tiles. This process was managed by SITU Fabrication, a New York based studio that specializes in executing highly complex millwork projects. The coloured tiles are made by hand, glazed and fired by Powerhouse Arts, a not-for-profit ceramics studio, also based in New York. As the first example of Heilmann’s work designed for a commercial setting, great care has been taken to treat the table’s surfaces with a clear, protective polyurethane layer that enables their form to be married with their function. In 2026, the tables will be auctioned for charity.  

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