Selected Works
A collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas, Chris Johnson, Bayeté Ross Smith and Kamal Sinclair
A collaboration with Hank Willis Thomas, Chris Johnson, Bayeté Ross Smith and Kamal Sinclair
July 11 – August
17, 2013
513 West 20th Street
New York, NY
Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to announce the collaborative project Question Bridge: Black Males and a selection of works
by Hank Willis Thomas that will
include Zero Hour from the Wayfarer series and
new sculptural pieces that employ photographs, clothing, wood and plexiglass to
explore complex narratives about race, history and visual culture.
Question Bridge: Black Males is a project that explores critical and challenging issues
within the African American male community by instigating a transmedia
conversation among black men from a range of geographic, economic,
generational, educational and social strata. The innovative video installation
begins a dialogue that is continued through special community events across the
country, a curriculum offered to high schools, a website and social media
engagement. Question Bridge aims to provide a forum for necessary, honest
expression and healing dialogue on themes that divide, unite and puzzle Black
males today in the United States. Questions and separately filmed answers are
then interwoven to create a stream-of-consciousness “megalogue” around issues
such as family, love, interracial relationships, community, education, violence
and the past and future of Black men in American society. From these exchanges
emerge surprising insights and new possibilities for witnessing our common
humanity.
Question Bridge: Black Males is a portal to an inner realm of Black male consciousness.
This five-channel video installation presents an intimate exchange between over
150 Black men from 12 different cities in America. These diverse, everyday
individuals ask and answer questions that are political, humorous, painful and
poignant. The installation is designed to invite visitors into a space where
they can experience an intimate exchange between the subjects of the project.
Question Bridge creates a platform for participants to represent and redefine
black male identity in America.
Question Bridge: Black Males was created by Chris Johnson, Hank Willis Thomas, Bayeté
Ross Smith and Kamal Sinclair. The Executive Producers are Delroy Lindo,
Deborah Willis and Jesse Williams. It is a fiscally sponsored project of the
Bay Area Video Coalition (a 501c3 not-for-profit organization) and supported in
part by a grant from the Open Society Institute: Campaign for Black Male
Achievement, The California Endowment, The Tribeca Film Institute, The LEF
Foundation, The Center for Cultural Innovation and the California College of
the Arts. The project was supported by the Sundance Institute’s New Frontier
Story Lab.
Hank Willis Thomas lives and works in New York City. He
has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and internationally. The
Cleveland Museum of Art will open a solo show on the 20th of October, 2013
which will run through the 9th of March, 2014. The exhibition will be on view
simultaneously in the museum’s photography gallery as well as in its new
auxiliary space, the Transformer Station, from December 14th, 2013 to March
8th, 2014.
Recent solo and group exhibitions include Hank Willis Thomas, The Art Museum at
the University of Kentucky, Kentucky, 2013; Hank Willis
Thomas: Believe It, SCAD Galleries, La Galerie Pfriem, Lacoste,
2012 which traveled to Pinnacle Gallery, Georgia and Trois Gallery, SCAD
Atlanta, Georgia; Strange Fruit,
The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Connecticut, 2012; Hank Willis Thomas: Strange Fruit,
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2011-2012; 30 Americans, Rubell Family Collection,
Florida, 2008–2013, currently traveled to the Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin; More American Photographs, CCA Wattis
Institute for Contemporary Art, California, 2011 -2013, traveling next to the
Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio; Making History,
MK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Germany, 2012; 12th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey,
2011; and Greater New
York, MoMA PS1, New York, 2010.
Thomas is included in numerous private and public
collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum; New York, the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; The Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio; The
Birmingham Museum, Alabama; Museum of Fine Art Houston, Texas; Corcoran Gallery
of Art, Washington D.C. and the Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland.
