Intentionally Left Blanc alludes to the technical process of its own (non)production; a procedure known as retro-reflective screen printing in which the image is only fully brought to life through its exposure to flash lighting. Using a found photograph depicting a passionate crowd of African Americans—their attitude suggesting the fervor of a civil-rights era audience— Intentionally Left Blanc reverts in its exposed, “positive” format to an image in which select faces are whitened out and erased, the exact inverse of the same view in its “negative” condition. This dialectic of light and dark re-emerges when we view the same faces again, only this time black and featureless, a scattering of disembodied heads amidst a sea of white. The context of the photograph was during protests in the 6os against gerrymandering and redistricting that sought to segregate the black and white populations. Here, Thomas approaches the situation with a revisionist eye, this time erasing and removing the white audience members, and thereby ironically reclaiming the same action they took against the black community.
Employing the visual language and terminology of mass media, and appropriating symbols and images from popular culture, Hank Willis Thomas’ work seeks to question and subvert established definitions and positions with regards to personal identity and the narrative of race. Working across installation, photography, video, and media work, Thomas maintains his photo conceptualist roots, primarily taking source material from found photographs and archives. These images form the basis from which the artist seeks to uncover the fallacies that history claims as truth. His work illustrates how the way history is represented and consumed reinforces generalizations surrounding identity, gender, race and ethnicity, and that as an artist he has an opportunity to expose or to revise those histories from the points of view of the oppressed.
7″ Single ‘Pop In’ by Martin Kippenbergher consisting of a vinyl record and a unique artwork drawn by the artist on the record’s sleeve...
Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...
Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion) is part of a series drawn from architectural objects that mark the boundary of public and private spaces Wong encountered while strolling in Hong Kong...
South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....
Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...
Defunct Mnemonics (2012) plays off woodworking traditions found in indigenous art in order to create a body of formally minimal objects that are both beautiful in their restraint and profoundly moving in their associations with the totemic...
The installation Music Stands: Free Exercise 7, 8, and 9 by Marina Rosenfeld consists of music stand-like structures and a corresponding set of panels and acoustic devices that direct, focus, obstruct, reflect and project sound in the gallery...
Zarouhie Abdalian, Rocky Cajigan, Jesse Chun, Nikita Gale, Shilpa Gupta, Baseera Khan, Tarik Kiswanson, Alexis Smith, and Cecilia Vicuña Be here, or even better, be nowhere brings together artists who employ sculpture, drawing, video, and sound to probe social and historical structures and infrastructures, such as migration, colonialism, carceral systems, and space militarization...
Architectural details become abstracted renderings in Chris Wiley’s inkjet prints 11 and 20 (both 2012)...
Oded Hirsch’s video work Nothing New (2012) utilizes seemingly absurdist tropes to raise more trenchant questions about communal action and collective identity in modern day Israel...
Relying on repetition and repurposed materials, Soares works to interrogate time—its measurement, its passing, and its meaning...
For his series of digital collages Excerpt (Sealed)… Rhodes appropriated multiple images from mass media and then sprayed an X on top of their glass and frame...
South Africa Righteous Space by Hank Willis Thomas is concerned with history and identity, with the way race and ‘blackness’ has not only been informed but deliberately shaped and constructed by various forces – first through colonialism and slavery, and more recently through mass media and advertising – and reminds us of the financial and economic stakes that have always been involved in representations of race....
Shot in black and white and printed on a glittery carborundum surface, Black Hands, White Cotton both confronts and abstracts the subject of its title...
The image is borrowed from protests during Civil Rights where African Americans in the south would carry signs with the same message to assert their rights against segregation and racism...
Foreigners Everywhere is a series of neon signs in several different languages...
Glenn Ligon’s diptych, Condition Repor t is comprised of two side-by-side prints...
Wright Imperial Hotel (2004) is a sort of bow and arrow made out of feathers, a São Paulo phone book, and other materials...
Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists | Blog | Royal Academy of Arts Catherine Opie in the RA Collection Gallery Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists Read more Become a Friend Video: Catherine Opie on photographing leading British artists Published 8 September 2023 Catherine Opie discusses her portraits of David Hockney, Anish Kapoor, Gillian Wearing, Isaac Julien and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, featured in our free display in the Collection Gallery...
As she traces the same shape again and again, Ojih Odutola’s lines become darker and deeper, sometimes pushed to the point where their blackness becomes luminous...
In a style that is unique of Tokoudagba, he evokes the kings, gods and their symbols related to the earth, water, air and fire, usually on a white background...
In the video Blanco sobre Blanco (White on White) , we see a white man appearing in a white screen embedded into a white wall— alluding to Malevich’s White on White series...