Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal Limited-Edition Box Set

Aperture is pleased to release this limited-edition box set by Hank Willis Thomas in celebration of the publication All Things Being Equal. The set features a special limited-edition book with a retro-reflective cover distinct from the trade edition, and limited-edition photograph It's More You, 2012 from the Fair Warning series. Here, the artist focuses on cigarette advertisements of the 1960s through the 1980s, removing only the cigarettes from each image to draw attention to the use of glamour, pleasure, and sex appeal as the primary visual signifiers deployed to sell the product. Both book and print are presented in a beautifully designed and titled black cloth slip-case. All Things Being Equal was the subject of a major exhibition at The Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, in October 2019. Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal presents a survey of the artist’s prolific and extraordinary interdisciplinary career, with a particular focus on the work’s relationship to the photographic image and to issues of representation and perception. At the core of Hank Willis Thomas’s practice is his ability to parse and critically dissect the flow of images that comprise American culture, with particular attention to race, gender, and cultural identity. Other powerful themes include the commodification of identity through popular media, sports, and advertising. Since his first publication, Pitch Blackness (2008), Thomas has established himself as a significant voice in contemporary art, equally at home with collaborative, trans-media projects such as Question Bridge, Philly Block, and For Freedoms, as he is with high-profile, international solo exhibitions. This extensive presentation of his work contextualizes the material with incisive essays from Portland Art Museum curators Julia Dolan and Sara Krajewski and art historian Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, and an in-depth interview between art historian Kellie Jones and the artist that elaborates on Thomas’s influences and inspirations.

Limited-edition Retro-Reflective hardcover book, presented with a Digital C-Print
Edition of 20 and 5 Artist’s Proofs
Print and book are both signed and numbered by the artist

Print name: It’s More You, 2012, from the series Fair Warning
Paper Size: 9 x 12 inches
Image Size: 9 x 12 inches

Book Format: Specially-bound retro-reflective hardcover
Book Size: 10 x 13 inches
Number of Pages: 268
Images: 265 black-and-white and 4 color images
Essays by Julia Dolan, Sara Krajewski, and Sarah Elizabeth Lewis
Interview by Kellie Jones
Copublished by Aperture and Portland Art Museum, Oregon

Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, New Jersey) received his BFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and his MFA in photography, along with an MA in visual criticism, from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad including the International Center of Photography, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain; Musée du quai Branly, Paris; Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong, and the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Netherlands.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been featured at Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, AK; SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; California African American Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Philadelphia Photo Arts Center, Philadelphia, PA; Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO, and the African American Museum, Philadelphia, PA, among others.

Major group exhibitions of his work include the 2017 inaugural show at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, South Africa; P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; Zacheta National Museum of Art, Poland; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA, and the 2006 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, Orange County, CA.

Thomas’ work is included in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

His collaborative projects include Question Bridge: Black Males, In Search Of The Truth (The Truth Booth), The Writing on the Wall, and For Freedoms. In 2017, For Freedoms was awarded the ICP Infinity Award for New Media and Online Platform. Thomas is a recipient of the Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2019), The Guggenheim Fellowship (2018), AIMIA | AGO Photography Prize (2017), Soros Equality Fellowship (2017), Aperture West Book Prize (2008), Renew Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation (2007), and the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship Award (2006). He is also a member of the Public Design Commission for the City of New York.

He received honorary doctorates from the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD and the Institute for Doctoral Studies in the Visual Arts, Portland, ME in 2017.

In 2019, Thomas unveiled his permanent work “Unity” in Brooklyn, NY. In 2017, “Love Over Rules” permanent neon was unveiled in San Francisco, CA and “All Power to All People” in Opa Locka, FL. His first monograph, Pitch Blackness, was published by Aperture in 2008. A survey of his work, Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal was copublished by Aperture and the Portland Art Museum in 2018. He is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York and Goodman Gallery in South Africa.