ART CITIES: Los Angeles-Hank Willis Thomas
Working across various modes of art-making such as sculpture, screen-printing, neon, mixed media, and installation art, Hank Willis Thomas is a conceptual artist widely known for his investigation of themes relating to mass media, identity, popular culture, and perspective. Thomas often seeks out and utilizes recognizable icons from popular branding and marketing campaigns. In using icons and other nods to popular culture, he encourages the viewer to question commercial consumer representation and the racial stereotypes it perpetuates.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive
Hank Willis Thomas looks to the ways popular imagery informs how people perceive themselves and others around the world, comparing this practice to the one of a “visual cultural archaeologist”. The exhibition “I’ve Known Rivers” is Hank Willis Thomas’ first-ever presentation with Pace. This debut exhibition showcases a selection of new retroreflective artworks, which reveal latent images depending on lighting and the perspective of the viewer, created by Thomas this year. Over the last ten years, Thomas has mastered the retroreflective medium, creating mixed media works that reveal two distinct scenes transfigured by both ambient and flash lighting. Seen from one perspective, these artworks present bold figurations, abstractions, and landscapes in saturated colors; seen from another, fragmented archival scraps from Thomas’s production of other retroreflective works over the last decade are revealed. As these elements converge and transform, they shed light on new layers of images, ideas, and meanings that are hidden in plain sight. Thomas’s retroreflective works can also be understood as personal records of his artistic process and the historical references that recur throughout his practice. The vibrant compositions on view in Thomas’s upcoming presentation are steeped in art history, and they speak to the artist’s continued explorations of abstraction through the lenses of colonization, globalization, and appropriation. Alluding to the work of Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, Roy Lichtenstein, Henri Matisse, and Malick Sidibé, the artist’s newest retroreflective works mine the complex origins and histories of modern art across Africa, the United States, and Europe. The exhibition’s title, “I’ve Known Rivers”, references Langston Hughes’s poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” first published in “The Crisis” magazine in July 1921. Then a little-known writer, Hughes would later become an icon of the Harlem Renaissance. Water is a central subject in both this poem and Thomas’s exhibition —it is positioned as a visual anchor, a point of entry, a mover of people, a container of ancient knowledge. The journey described in Hughes’s poem, like Thomas’s work, is not linear or easily traced. Instead, readers of the poem and viewers of Thomas’s art are invited to investigate details and travel to unexpected places. Thomas works across sculpture, screen-printing, photography, mixed media, video, and installation. Through his practice, he examines subjects related to mass media, popular culture, consumerism, and identity, often making use of perspectival nuance as part of these explorations. A trained photographer, Thomas is deeply interested in both the making and consumption of images, with his investigations into subjectivity and perception informing his work in photography and other mediums. The artist is also known for his galvanizing public works, which showcase his personal commitment to social activism and encourage participation and contribution from the viewer. Among Thomas’s recent projects is the large-scale bronze sculpture “The Embrace” (2023), which was unveiled on the Boston Common in January 2023. This permanent memorial is inspired by an archival photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his wife, Coretta Scott King, embracing after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. As such, “The Embrace” can be understood as an ode to collaboration, love, and equality, reflecting Thomas’s ongoing inquiries into economic and racial justice. Thomas’s reconfiguration of a two-dimensional photograph into a large- scale, three-dimensional monument crystallizes a single moment in time, speaking to the importance of gesture, conviviality, and community. Next year, two new installations by Thomas will be permanently unveiled on the East and West entrances of the new Judkins Park Station in Seattle.
Photo: Hank Willis Thomas, “I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young”, 2023, Silkscreen and UV printed retroreflective vinyl, mounted on Dibond, 96″ × 112″ × 2″ (243.8 cm × 284.5 cm × 5.1 cm) Framed Size: 97-1/8 x 121-3/4 x 2-5/8 inches, © Hank Willis Thomas, Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery
Info: Pace Gallery, 1201 South La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A., Duration: 15/7-26/8/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/
