Hank has computer-imaged the ads to eliminate all the original text and brand identifications, so that what we’re left with are remarkably revealing and absorbing portraits of black people (occasionally The starting point for Unbranded is 40 years of selected magazine and newspaper advertisements created by Corporate America and aimed at Black America from 1968. Hank the Younger has been showing his work since student days in the mid-Nineties, but PS1 was my first encounter and he knocked me out. Father Hank Thomas was/is a jazz musician turned film producer, property developer, and stockbroker mother Deborah Willis (Ph.D.) is an accomplished photographer, widely published author, NYU professor and current chair of the Tisch School’s Department of Photography. Hank was born in Plainfield, New Jersey (the original stomping grounds of George Clinton and the nascent P arliament-Funkadelic, BTW) and holds degrees from California College of the Arts and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. But my favorite among all the various galleries was the first complete NYC installation of the pictorial series Unbranded by the African-American artist Hank Willis Thomas. I had not visited PS1 in years and was very impressed by the scope and diversity of the current “Greater New York” show, encompassing painting, sculpture, video, photography, mixed media, and two exotic koi goldfish (in a sort of living diorama by Tommy Hartung entitled B Roll). On this particular day, the Oberlin College Alumni Association was offering a free guided tour to Oberlin grads (Leslie graduated with the class of ’77). An exhibition space rather than a collecting institution, MoMA PS1 devotes its energy and resources to displaying the most experimental art in the world…MoMA PS1 actively pursues emerging artists, new genres, and adventurous new work by recognized artists in an effort to support innovation in contemporary art.” This semi-autonomous branch of the Museum of Modern Art is described on its Web site as “one of the oldest and largest non-profit contemporary art institutions in the United States. 7 train from Grand Central to MoMA PS1 in Long Island City. Last Saturday (), Leslie and I hopped the No.
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