Artist: Hank Willis Thomas

Pace presents Kinship of the Soul, Hank Willis Thomas’s second solo exhibition with the gallery and his first at Pace in London.

The presentation showcases a new body of retroreflective collages that continue Thomas’s exploration of the histories of abstraction through the lenses of colonization, globalization, and appropriation, with reference to Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, and Henri Matisse. These works, which reveal latent images depending on their lighting and the viewer’s perspective, underscore Thomas’s interest in using wayfinding materials to illuminate often overlooked histories and narratives.

Known for his conceptual work across various media—including sculpture, screen printing, photography, video, and installation—Thomas thoughtfully examines subjects related to mass media, popular culture, consumerism, and identity. He is deeply engaged in both the construction and consumption of images, employing nuanced perspectives to inject meaning across his œuvre.

The exhibition’s title —Kinship of the Soul—is borrowed from novelist and storyteller Isaac Bashevis Singer. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has described Singer’s phrase as capturing “that indefinable something that connects all of us together.” The new works that Thomas will present in London often reveal a sea of faces drawn from archival images of historical protests worldwide, humanizing movements for social change and emphasizing the intimate scale of the forces driving them. For this body of work, Thomas has incorporated collaged images from his ongoing photo and archival research, along with protest material specific to the UK. By capturing and intertwining moments of historical unease and protest across the UK, Thomas integrates them into his larger global dialogue, with the location of the exhibition serving as a vital component in his exploration of interconnected struggles worldwide.

Throughout the exhibition, Thomas references Romare Bearden, Aaron Douglas, and Henri Matisse, alluding to their shared creative "kinship of the soul"—a concept that, for Thomas, embodies the accumulation of knowledge that has preceded us, a journey that is neither linear nor easily traced. These artists were at the vanguard of Modernism and modernist thought, creating bold and innovative work that heralded a new era of art and culture. Images from Bearden’s Odysseus series, Douglas’s cover design for Wallace Thurman’s novel The Blacker the Berry, and Matisse’s iconic Icarus figure intertwine, merge, and transform across Thomas’s new works.

Over the last ten years, Thomas has been experimenting with the retroreflective medium, creating mixed media works from retroreflective vinyl (a material typically used on road signage) that reveal two distinct scenes, transformed by ambient and flash lighting. From one perspective, Thomas’s artworks present bold figurations, abstractions, and landscapes in saturated colors; from another, they reveal fragmented archival images drawn from his production of other retroreflective works over the past decade. As these elements converge and shift, they play with both perception and meaning, generating new layers of imagery and ideas that lay hidden in plain sight. Thomas’s retroreflective works serve as both a personal record of his artistic process and an ongoing dialogue with the historical references that weave through his practice.

In the UK, and concurrent with Kinship of the Soul, works by Thomas are featured in Fragile Beauty: Photographs from the Sir Elton John and David Furnish Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, through January 5, 2025. Additionally, Thomas’s monumental bronze sculpture, All Power to All People (Bronze) (2023), is on view at Yorkshire Sculpture Park through August 2025. On November 14, Pace will open Kinship: Irving Penn, Curated by Hank Willis Thomas.

Hank Willis Thomas will be in conversation with Madeleine Haddon, Curator of V&A East, on November 21.