Hank Willis Thomas
22 Feb - 29 Mar 2014
© Hank Willis Thomas
An injury to one is and an injury to all, 2014
Fiberglass and aluminum
91 mm in diameter
An injury to one is and an injury to all, 2014
Fiberglass and aluminum
91 mm in diameter
HANK WILLIS THOMAS
History Doesn't Laugh
22 February - 29 March 2014
History Doesn’t Laugh is Hank Willis Thomas’s first solo exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. The show highlights the artist’s interest in representing photographic ideas through unconventional materials.
For this exhibition, he scoured numerous publications and archives looking for graphics, images and audio that exemplify, through popular culture, South Africa’s recent history. The result is a fascinating combination of installations, objects, and prints that present the visual complexities of the not so distant past.
Thomas is debuting a series of photo-derived sculptures cast in aluminum, silicone and bronze that reframe the original image by focusing on the impact of hand gestures. In his more familiar style, he appropriates graphically striking political buttons and increases them in size to large-scale wall hangings. The show also includes screen-printed images from various magazines re-contextualised in a manner that exaggerates the hyper-reality of the time in which they were originally produced.
History Doesn't Laugh
22 February - 29 March 2014
History Doesn’t Laugh is Hank Willis Thomas’s first solo exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. The show highlights the artist’s interest in representing photographic ideas through unconventional materials.
For this exhibition, he scoured numerous publications and archives looking for graphics, images and audio that exemplify, through popular culture, South Africa’s recent history. The result is a fascinating combination of installations, objects, and prints that present the visual complexities of the not so distant past.
Thomas is debuting a series of photo-derived sculptures cast in aluminum, silicone and bronze that reframe the original image by focusing on the impact of hand gestures. In his more familiar style, he appropriates graphically striking political buttons and increases them in size to large-scale wall hangings. The show also includes screen-printed images from various magazines re-contextualised in a manner that exaggerates the hyper-reality of the time in which they were originally produced.