The most revolutionary thing a person can do is be open to change.”- Hank Willis Thomas

Hank Willis Thomas’s (b. 1976, Plainfield, NJ) practice as a conceptual artist and activist focuses on themes relating to commodity, identity, media, and popular culture. Experimenting with mixed media and mass-produced imagery, Thomas’s practice includes photography, sculpture, installation, and more. 

This exhibition of 90 works covers 20 years of Thomas’s work and is drawn from the collection of the Jordan Schnitzer. The exhibition features some of the artist’s most iconic and well-known artworks across a range of media, investigating diverse themes. LOVERULES also highlights several important series, including Branded and Unbranded: Reflections in Black by Corporate America. In Branded, Thomas explores and re-contextualizes the history of brand advertising and sponsorship through the iconography of sport. In Unbranded, Thomas digitally removes advertising punchlines and logos, with both series thereby highlighting the consistently dehumanizing strategies of corporate media, the commodification of African-American identity, and how dominant cultures shape notions of race and race relations. Through the reframing of iconic imagery and texts, Thomas connects historical moments of resistance to our lives today. With incisive clarity, he asks us to see and challenge systems of inequality while affirming our shared humanity to shape a better future.