WHEN THE ARTISTS Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian bought their home near Gramercy Park in 2020, it was a longstanding shrine to rock ’n’ roll glory. On a gracious Manhattan block shielded by a canopy of Bradford pear trees, the five-story, almost 24-foot-wide townhouse, built in 1910 and reimagined by the architect Rosario Candela in 1919, had been owned for three decades by Ric Ocasek, the late co-founder and lead singer of the Cars, and his wife, the model Paulina Porizkova. There was cheetah-print carpeting, tall potted palms and bathrooms with mirrored walls and black lacquer. Four years in, Johnson, 46, and Hovsepian, 49, who live with their 12-year-old son, Julius, and a dog named Bruno, have transformed the 5,800-square-foot space — with its vast 20-foot-tall living room and wall of casement windows that open onto a back garden — into a radically different sort of sanctuary. “Art is the center of our approach to everything,” says Johnson. “That’s where we put our energy.”
Hovsepian, who was born in Isfahan, Iran, and grew up in Toledo, Ohio, makes allusive, shadowy photographs and assemblages that are in the permanent collections of New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago. Johnson, who was born in Evanston, Ill., and raised between there and Chicago, has been a dominant force in visual culture since the turn of the millennium, when, at 23, he was included in the seminal 2001 “Freestyle” show at the Studio Museum in Harlem. His multidisciplinary body of work ranges from large, looping abstract paintings thrumming with existential anxiety to room-size steel scaffolding enclosures stacked with tropical plants, shea butter sculptures, patterned rugs and, for a 2016 show at one of Hauser & Wirth’s New York galleries, an upright piano played daily by a classically trained musician. His recent fractured and frenzied giant mosaics — composed of ceramic, mirror shards, wood and other materials — can be seen at the Metropolitan Opera and La Guardia Airport.
But the couple’s commitment to art extends beyond their own practices. They’re known for supporting emerging talents and bringing attention to older Black artists who’ve not gotten their due. And their taste in design moves fluidly through cultures and eras — from the polished flair of Brazilian Modernism to the epic proportions of Venice’s art-filled palazzos. With the help of the designer Ariel Ashe and the architect Reinaldo Leandro, a duo known for their bold, graphic aesthetic, they’ve created interiors that are equal parts provocation and celebration. Collecting, Johnson says, is “my way to unpack my relationship with history through objects.”
