Silhouettes and Illuminations: Ray Johnson at David Zwirner

How do you draw a Ray Johnson? The artist’s contours can be difficult to trace. Johnson had been living in seclusion on Long Island for nearly thirty years, appearing mostly through the art he sent friends and strangers in the mail, before he jumped off a Sag Harbor bridge in January 1995. Yet he was also a queer gadabout whose extensive network—established in person and maintained by post—led his friends in the three-artist collective General Idea to affectionately dub him &ld