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CollectingTheaster Gates

June 9, 2017

From his Chicago studio, Theaster Gates reflects on the various collections he has acquired and created artworks with, including the Jet magazine archives and the inventory of an entire hardware store. In addition to serving as source material for the artist, the collections provide Gates with insight into how one person or institution sees the world. “It’s like this little time capsule of things that were important to someone,” he says.

The majority of the collections come from his immediate surroundings on Chicago’s South Side. “How do you catalog the everyday, especially as the phenomena of the everyday is changing?” Gates asks, “And is this another way of tracking Black space?” The materials function as an archive when shown in their original state, or they can be amalgamated and transformed into a painting or sculpture. “It’s the thing, and it’s the thing that makes the thing,” says the artist.

More information and credits

Credits

Producer: Ian Forster & Nick Ravich. Interview: Stanley Nelson. Editor: Morgan Riles. Camera: Brian Ashby, Damian Hennessey, Ben Kolak & Christoph Lerch. Sound: Alex Inglizian & Grant Tye. Artwork Courtesy: Theaster Gates, Regen Projects & White Cube. Music: Outrun, SANMI & Soft and Furious. Additional Footage Courtesy: White Cube. Photography Courtesy: Milwaukee Art Museum / John R. Glembin. Special Thanks: Kunsthaus Bregenz.

Art21 Extended Play is supported, in part, by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; 21c Museum Hotel, and by individual contributors.

Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian

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Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.

Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates creates sculptures with clay, tar, and renovated buildings, transforming the raw material of urban neighborhoods into radically reimagined vessels of opportunity for the community. Establishing a virtuous circle between fine art and social progress, Gates strips dilapidated buildings of their components, transforming those elements into sculptures that act as bonds or investments, the proceeds of which are used to finance the rehabilitation of entire city blocks. Many of the artist’s works evoke his African-American identity and the broader struggle for civil rights, from sculptures incorporating fire hoses, to events organized around soul food, and choral performances by the experimental musical ensemble Black Monks of Mississippi, led by Gates himself.

“I spend a lot of time looking for the personality of people within their collections. And then maybe even trying to tease out, in a collection, why those things are important.”

Theaster Gates


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