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8 WHAT'S UP! MARCH 15-21, 2020 FAQ 'Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal…' WHEN — On display through April 20 WHERE — Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville COST — $5; free for members, veterans and youth 18 and younger INFO — 418-5700, crystalbridges.org "Branded Head" is part of Thomas' well-known "Branded" series and is part of the exhibition of his work on display through April 20. (Courtesy Photo/Jack Shainman Gallery and the artist) JOCELYN MURPHY NWA Democrat-Gazette H ank Willis Thomas estimates it was late 2015 or early 2016 when curators he had known for some time at the Portland Art Museum approached him about mounting a survey of his artwork. "Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal…" finally opened at the end of last year in Oregon before making its way to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville in February. More than 90 works of varying media are divided into eight thematic sections that span two decades of history for Thomas' first mid-career survey. Here, Thomas discusses his work with What's Up! following the exhibition's debut. Q. How did it feel to see your work brought together for your own exhibition? A. It's pretty amazing to see. It's like me looking at my thoughts with a lot of other people; it's a pretty fascinating experience. But it's also been a pretty beautiful one, really enlightening. I'm just really excited to be able to see the public engage with it, and then to see new audiences in places where I haven't really had the chance to show my work that much. Q. It's also not insignificant that this is being labeled a "mid-career" survey of your work, which I feel like kind of implies we're looking forward to the promise of how the rest of your career progresses. A. Or maybe that's it. (Laughs) It definitely feels like a high point. I'm really focusing on that feeling and just wanting to kind of take a pause and look at this moment in my life and career and really appreciate it. And appreciate the people who put so much time and energy into helping me make the work, but also make the work have as much visibility as it's had. It's really hard to reconcile how many people over the course of the past 20 years have had their hands or hearts or minds invested in making this work real. Though it's got my name on it, it's had hundreds of authors. So that's pretty awesome, seeing the collective pinnacle of all of our work. Q. You were in Bentonville for the opening at Crystal Bridges, and it looks like there was a pretty good turnout for your speaking engagement. People were excited to have you here. A. I think that was my fourth time to Bentonville — I've spoken at the university, I've done site visits for the show, I've got friends there now, I've done collaborations with 21c [Museum Hotel] in the past… so it's really cool to see both the city grow, and the community grow. But also to see the public engage with the work in a unique place. My work [deals] so much with advertising, so being viewed by a public that's very attuned to marketing in commerce, that's a unique experience. Because Bentonville and Portland are, in some ways, company towns: Nike is based in Portland. So I don't think it's a coincidence that this show is going to these places. Q. I want to ask you specifically about the pieces in the exhibition section titled "Punctum" where you've created sculptures out of an isolated detail from a photo. What can you share about your process for these works, how you choose the message you want to highlight in that way? A. In his book Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes talks about this idea of, with certain pictures, the thing that sticks with you, the thing that pierces you — the thing that makes an image timeless so that it lives on in the psyche of the viewer. And I found that to be a really fascinating way of talking about how the ephemeral can become, not physical or tactile, but like it has a resonant impact. When I looked back in history or with historical photographs, I've always wondered what it was like to be there. As a photographer, and as a photo researcher, I'm very familiar with archival images, but they always felt like there's something missing. So, I wanted to create a phenomenological relationship to them by making these sculptures that really allow the viewer to, if not walk into a photograph, walk around the photograph and have a new relationship to different elements of them. See Thomas Page 40 Five Minutes, Five Questions Artist Hank Willis Thomas Hand Willis Thomas (Courtesy Photo by Ironside Photography/Stephen Ironside) 5X5