HANK WILLIS THOMAS. THE TRUTH IS I SEE YOU

NEW SOLO EXHIBITION BY HANK WILLIS THOMAS FOR DOWNTOWN BROOKLYN EXPLORES THE NATURE OF TRUTH ACROSS CULTURE, GENDER, AND RACE

July 15, 2015, NEW YORK, NY—Public Art Fund and Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC) announce Hank Willis Thomas: The Truth Is I See You, an exhibition at MetroTech Commons featuring a series of works centered on the artist’s decade-long investigation of the social, political, personal, and subjective nature of truth. Utilizing the form of a speech bubble, similar to those popularized in comic books and graphic novels, these “truth bubbles” will take three different forms: a series of 22 large “signs” installed on the light posts of Myrtle Promenade; two benches installed among the plaza’s trees; and a sculptural tree-like sign with truth bubbles at the ends of each branch. The signs will carry statements like “The truth is I fear you”, “The truth is I judge you”, and “The truth is I love you” in the myriad languages spoken across Brooklyn, alongside their English translations. In addition, the artist’s wellknown collaboration with Ryan Alexiev and Jim Ricks of the Cause Collective, In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth), will pop up at several Downtown Brooklyn locations including MetroTech Commons and the Target Center Plaza on Atlantic Avenue during the run of the exhibition. Part recording booth, part large-scale speech bubble sculpture, The Truth Booth is a hub for public interaction, where visitors are able to talk about the idea of truth and contribute to the artists’ ongoing project. Thomas has said of the exhibition: “The impetus is to find out how we as a community can accept that even though other people’s truths are different from ours, they are still valuable.” Hank Willis Thomas: The Truth Is I See You will be on view at MetroTech Commons, Downtown Brooklyn, August 4, 2015 – June 3, 2016.

“Hank Willis Thomas’s aesthetically refined and conceptually potent work takes on pressing questions about belief, identity, and community with a rare combination of boldness and sensitivity. This newly commissioned body of work, his most significant public installation to date, extends both his artistic practice and its engagement with the richly layered Brooklyn community,” said Nicholas Baume, Public Art Fund Director & Chief Curator.

Based in Brooklyn, Thomas is a conceptual artist who focuses on themes related to identity, media, and popular culture. He works in photography, sculpture, installation, and performance and incorporates recognizable icons into his work to examine and subvert their popular meaning. Often drawing on sources from well-known advertising and branding campaigns, his work creates opportunities for mutual understanding between diverse audiences.

“We are thrilled to present the work of a Brooklyn artist whose installation connects to and celebrates the diversity of our Borough while raising questions about the nature of social truths and perceptions in our multicultural urban setting,” said David L. Berliner, FCRC’s Chief Operating Officer and the executive responsible for overseeing the Company’s various art programs. “It is an honor to have Hank Willis Thomas activate our public space to engage viewers in a dialogue regarding the relationships among members of our diverse and vibrant communities.”

The Truth Is I See You is part of a series of works that explore the social potential of looking at the truth from different perspectives, and the statements featured on the works in the exhibition, like “The truth is I respect you” or “The truth is I remind you”, are drawn from a poem written by Thomas and his collaborator Ryan Alexiev. In Thomas’s lamppost-mounted works along Myrtle Promenade between Jay Street and Flatbush Avenues, the artist draws on the visual language of wayfinding. The front of each “sign” will feature a line from the poem in one of the many languages popularly spoken in Brooklyn today, including Spanish, Mandarin, Yiddish, Arabic, and Urdu; the reverse of each will feature the English translation. Within the Commons the artist has designed two works to be installed at ground level to function as both objects for contemplation and stand-in benches. More than seven-feet-tall and nine-feet-wide, the form of the truth bubble is seen here only as an outline, with the interior space open, forming seating and making porous the idea of truth. In addition, a “sign tree” will display a grouping of smaller truth bubbles that attach to the ends of each “branch” at varying heights.

Finally, at several moments during the course of the exhibition, Thomas and his collaborators, the Cause Collective, will install the interactive video project, The Truth Booth, in Metrotech Commons and at nearby locations. In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth) is a 16-foot-tall by 23-foot-wide white speech bubble with the word “TRUTH” written in black on its exterior. It has traveled across the globe from Ireland to Afghanistan and South Africa, recording ideas of truth from some 5,000 people. Visitors who enter the work are asked to finish the statement “The truth is…” while looking into a camera. These two-minute responses, described by Thomas as “a collaboration” with the public, are compiled by the artists as part of the ongoing global Truth Booth project.

"Throughout his work, Hank Willis Thomas has been unrelenting in his exploration and critique of the impacts of social, cultural, and political frameworks on our understanding of the world," said exhibition curator Andria Hickey. "This exhibition considers—in the many languages that are spoken in Brooklyn—the subjectivity of truth. It asks how we might gain a greater understanding of our shared experiences as we open ourselves to the different perspectives we encounter every day."

With a focus on exhibitions featuring new commissions, past exhibitions at MetroTech Commons have included artists like Vito Acconci, Martin Basher, Chakaia Booker, Matthew Day Jackson, Esther Kläs, Ryan McGinness, Dave McKenzie, Jason Middlebrook, Adam Pendleton, Erin Shirreff, Valeska Soares, Do-Ho Suh, Katharina Grosse, and most recently, Sam Falls. This exhibition is curated by Public Art Fund Curator Andria Hickey.

ABOUT THE ARTIST
Hank Willis Thomas (b. 1976, Plainfield, NJ) is based in Brooklyn. Recent solo and exhibitions have been presented at the Cleveland Museum of Art (2013); The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT (2012); Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., (2012); Brooklyn Museum (2010); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (2009); The Baltimore Museum of Art (2009); and The Fabric Workshop and Museum Storefront, Philadelphia (2008). His work is held in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Brooklyn Museum; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His collaborative projects have been featured at the Sundance Film Festival and installed publicly at the Birmingham International Airport, Oakland International Airport, The Oakland Museum of California, and the University of California, San Francisco. Thomas 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 California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco. Thomas has acted as a visiting professor at CCA and in the MFA programs at Maryland Institute College of Art and ICP/Bard and has lectured at Yale University, Princeton University, the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris. He received a new media fellowship through the Tribeca Film Institute and was an artist in residence at John Hopkins University. In 2011, Thomas was a fellow at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University. Thomas is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City and Goodman Gallery in South Africa.