Toastkitten

Berto, profile (from Winter in America)

I meant to include Frequency on my list the other day but I thought I would hold off until I knew which artists would be included. I still don't have a whole lot of background on this show but I just found out that Hank Willis Thomas would probably have video and photographic work on view. Photography has never been that central to Thelma Golden's exhibition program at the SMH but I'm glad to see that Thomas' work will be a part of this show.

I have been looking at, and thinking about, Thomas' images since I got back from SF last month. "Winter in America" (2005), the stop-motion animation video and photographs he created in collaboration with artist and curator Kambui Olujimi, is a searing commentary on gun violence. Thomas created the work in response to his cousin Songha's murder in 2000. To dramatize the night of the shooting, Thomas uses the same action figures that he and his cousin played with as children. Simply put: it's one of the most haunting works I've seen this year.

"Winter" premiered at the "Bay Area Now 4" triennial, presented by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (on view till Nov 6th). A large blow up of Thomas' iconic color photograph "Priceless", hangs over the Mission Street entrance to the Yerba Buena Center and serves as a kind of banner announcing the exhibition. Carla has an interesting post on the lack of context for this piece and the reaction that it's getting on the street. You can read about it here.

Thomas is a skilled image-maker. All of his works are technically polished and often blend slick style with social commentary. Ironic appropriation of corporate symbols and strong graphic design are combined to create pointed responses to consumer culture. His photographs and prints provoke discussion of the myriad forces at work in determining black male identity in America. I saw some of this work at Artist Space last year in a group show called “Salad Days”. For this show, Thomas created photographs, silk-screened T-shirts and baseball caps and curator Isolde Brielmaier presented this work in a section of the gallery made to look something like a corporate lobby mixed with a gift shop. The combination of corporate iconography with slave era images of ships and lynching resulted in eye catching, if familiar political statement.

Technically, these works were well executed, clearly presented and easily understood. But it's the works that are more closely tied to the loss of his cousin that have stayed with me, playing again and again in my mind. The video along with his observant color photographs of family members morning their loss are at once an indictment of our violent culture and a deeply felt memorial. The balance of social statement and human emotion is pitch perfect and the echo of those moments still reverberates in my mind's eye.

I look forward to seeing more of Thomas' work in this vein.