WHEN ARTISTS Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian bought their home near Gramercy Park in 2020, it was a longtime shrine to rock ‘n’ roll glory. On a genteel Manhattan block covered by a canopy of Bradford pear trees, the five-story, nearly 24-foot-wide mansion, built in 1910 and redesigned by architect Rosario Candela in 1919, was owned for three decades by Ric Ocasek. the late Cars co-founder and singer and his wife, model Paulina Porizkova; There was cheetah-print carpeting, tall potted palms and bathrooms with mirrored walls and black lacquer. Four years later, 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 a whopping 20 feet high. living room and wall of windows opening onto a back garden — into a radically different kind of sanctuary. “Art is at the center of our approach to everything,” says Johnson. “That’s where we put our energy.”
Hovsepian, who was born in Isfahan, Iran and raised in Toledo, Ohio, makes suggestive, 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 grew up between there and Chicago, has been a dominant force in visual culture since the turn of the millennium when, at age 23, he was included in the seminal 2001 “Freestyle” show at the museum studio in Harlem. His multi-thematic body of work ranges from large, rotating abstract paintings that pulsate with existential angst to room-sized steel scaffolding stacked with tropical plants, shea butter sculptures, patterned rugs and, for 2016 show in one of Hauser & Wirth’s New York galleries, an upright piano played daily by a classically trained musician. His recently broken and frantic giant mosaics — composed of ceramics, mirror fragments, 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 are known for supporting up-and-coming talent and bringing attention to older black artists who have been under-represented. And their taste in design moves fluidly through cultures and eras — from the polished feel of Brazilian modernism to the epic proportions of Venice’s art-filled palazzos. With the help of designer Ariel Ashe and architect Reinaldo Leandro, a duo known for their bold, graphic aesthetic, they have created interiors that are equal parts challenge and celebration. The collection, Johnson says, is “my way of unraveling my relationship with history through objects.”
The couple’s connection to the design studio, known as Ashe Leandro, was forged more than 15 years ago when both designers and artists established themselves in New York. Leandro, now 45, bought two small Johnson works from an early show. Five years later, with the artist’s career taking off, he and Hovsepian asked them to rethink their Kips Bay mansion, where the couple lived before moving to Gramercy, as well as three consecutive homes on Long Island. “It makes a difference if you can actually find someone,” says Ashe, 44. “When we first worked with him, we were trying to save money while being original, and there were a lot of limitations. Now, as Rashid gets bolder and bolder, we can get bolder and bolder too.”
THE 34-foot-long MAIN room, as spacious as a Chelsea gallery, is approached through a creamy plaster arched entryway crowned with a collage of Hovsepian photographs. The lack of ornamentation was intended to accentuate the space’s most dramatic feature: an 18th-century recycled ceiling from Sicily. “In a room like this, you have to find some way to draw the eye up,” says Ashe. A 1940s Steinway grand piano, which Julius plays, sits near a monumental limestone hearth reclaimed from a late 18th-century French chateau. Some African figurines and masks, which Johnson has been collecting for decades, flank the scarf. A 2004 spiral aluminum sculpture by Louise Bourgeois—a motif in her work partly inspired by her childhood dream of wringing the neck of her father’s mistress—hangs above a 1960s dining table by Polish-Brazilian architect Jorge Zalszupin. In a nearby sitting room, a George Nakashima coffee table sits in front of a fancy custom sofa covered in burnt yellow mohair and a polished rosewood Zalszupin chair. a 1951 canvas by Abstract Expressionist Adolph Gottlieb. and a nearly 11-foot-tall gold-leaf bronze totem by New York-based sculptor Simone Leigh.
On the mezzanine, which has three tall curved openings that look out onto the space, there is a wood-paneled bookcase with a brown leather sofa and a black and white shaggy geometric rug. On the shelves are ceramics and small works by German sculptor Isa Genzken and American artists Pope.L and Lawrence Weiner. A solid painting by Kentucky-born artist Bob Thompson — a major influence on Johnson — adorns one wall, while on the other is a cartoonish painting by Philip Guston depicting members of the Ku Klux Klan. “We’ve got a real mix in here,” Johnson says. “I’m African-American and Sheree is Iranian. So there is some Iranian feel, some African influence, a bit of Brazilian modernism and some European influence. Really, for us, it’s about figuring out a way to Creole all these things.”
While the common areas are spare, the upstairs rooms lean toward lavish hedonism. For Ashe and Leandro, this was new territory. “If you look at our work, it’s usually not that decadent,” Ashe says. “But they love a moody room.” Here, the stairs are carpeted in leopard print, a nod to the previous owners. The idea for the master bedroom came about after Johnson and Hovsepian stayed at the ornate Hotel Bauer in Venice while Hovsepian participated in the 2022 Biennale. “They fell in love with their room and sent us a message raving about it,” says Ashe, “so we tried to provoke it.” The walls are now lined with custom gold woven silk jacquard made by the family-owned French company Prelle, with matching window treatments. for a modern juxtaposition, the designers added a shaggy love patchwork and a Racket chair from Brazil’s Campana brothers. On one wall, there’s a white plaster sculpture with rounded outlines by British-American artist Thomas Houseago, as well as a portrait of Hovsepian by Los Angeles-based painter Henry Taylor — a companion piece to Taylor’s portrait of Johnson in the burgundy media room .
On the top floor, where July reigns, the walls hold brightly colored and kaleidoscopic works by Walter Price and Alteronce Gumby, two young New York-based painters. It’s no surprise that living with so much art has sparked the boy’s imagination: Johnson jokes that a painted papier-mâché winged animal by their son in the basement recreation room could be mistaken for the work of the playful Austrian sculptor Franz West. “This,” Johnson says, gesturing with his long arms to the whole project, with its mix of history, culture and creativity, “is a place for design, failure and experimentation. We’re just people living in a thing.”