Biography
© Mark Peckmezian
© Mark Peckmezian

I believe that beauty is a basic service.

-T.G.

Theaster Gates was born in Chicago in 1973. From the beginning his conceptual mantra has been the renovation and the pursuit of Beauty.
East Garfield Park, a working-class neighborhood in Chicago and the artist's place of origin, is crucial in Gates's artistic research, as it encouraged him to develop his concept of research and regeneration of beauty.
As explained by the artist, his main purpose was to break the dark architectural “barriers” typical of some areas of Chicago.
Gates's aim was to create a positive environmental ecosystem, not because of a pure and simple aesthetic need, but because of the desire to overcome a surrounding space where darkness and opacity could prevail, generating negative consequences for the inhabitants of these neighborhoods.
In 1996 Gates graduated from Iowa State University in “Urban Planning and Ceramics” program. He then deepened his studies concerning ceramics in Tokoname in Japan. He finally obtains a master's degree from the University of Cape Town in "Fine Arts and Religious Studies".  
In the early 2000s, as soon as he finished student academic studies, Gates started to concentrate his artistic practice on his university studies: the making of ceramics and the merging of religious elements in the art process, focusing especially on African artifacts.
Gates chooses ceramic and clay because, as the artist says, using these materials “it is possible to create magnificent objects, from nothing”. 
What drives the artist to create his first works is in fact the concept of being able to give life and meaning to what previously did not have it. 
Later Gates expanded the variety of materials used in his works, choosing unusual elements, never actually conceived for creative use. 
Among these, the use of tar is very interesting, how Gates came into contact with it and what prompted him to elevate it to an artistic material.
Theaster Gates's father owned a small roof repair and small building construction company. When he retired, he decided to give his son, in a symbolic way, his tar boiler.
Gates then wondered how to use such a tool in his studio, which became for him a new expedient in his artistic creation.
Despite the difficulty in processing the tar, Gates manages to model it, almost like a work on ceramic, thanks to the help of his father.
Transform is probably the verb that best suits the artist. Giving new artistic dignity to materials without any peculiarities, without attraction and which often obscure everything around.
Works
Solo & Group Show
Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates CV

Born in 1973 in Chicago (United States of America).

 

EXHIBITIONS

2020

Amalgam, Tate Liverpool, United Kingdom

Black Image Corporation, Spelman College Museum of Fine   Art, Atlanta, USA

2019

Black Chapel, Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany

Black Image Corporation, PRADA Mode, 180 The Strand, London

Assembly Hall, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Amalgam, Palais de Tokyo, Paris

Facsimile Cabinet of Women Origin Stories, Colby Museum of  Art, Waterville, Maine

Streams of Consciousness, Bamako Biennial, Bamako, Mali

 …and other such stories, Chicago Architectural Biennial, Chicago

Mask in Present-Day Art, Aargauer Kunsthaus, Switzerland

2018

The Black Image Corporation, Fondazione Prada, Milan

Black Madonna, Sprengel Museum, Hannover

MONUMENTality, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

New Materialism, Kunsthalle Bonniers, Stockholm

Travellers: Stepping into the Unknown, The National Museum of   

Art, Osaka, Japan

2017

In the Tower, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The Minor Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

The Black Monastic, IHME Festival, Helsinki

L’emozione dei COLORI nell’arte, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy

An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s 

Collection, 1940-2017, Whitney Museum, New York

2016

How to Build a House Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Black Archive, Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria

True Value, Fondazione Prada, Milan

The Color Line, musée du Quai Branly, Paris

The Underground Museum, Non-fiction, Museum of 

Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

2015

Contemporary Conversations, Ottawa Residence

SALTWATER: A Theory of Thought Forms, 14th Istanbul Biennial

All the World’s Futures, 56th Venice Biennial

 

 

Publications