Theaster Gates - Grand Format

Theaster Gates (b. 1973) has developed an expanded practice that includes space development, object making, performance, and critical engagement with many different publics. After graduating in Urban Planning, Ceramics and Religious Studies at the Iowa State University and at the University of Cape Town, Gates returned to his native Chicago and made his home in a former storefront on South Dorchester Avenue he reactivated as a site of community interaction and cultural hub.
This turned out to be the first in a long series of acquisitions that eventually culminated in Dorchester Projects, a venture encompassing an agglomeration of formerly abandoned buildings on the city's South Side redesigned as spaces for film programming and artist residencies. Dorchester Projects' use of repurposed objects and materials from all over Chicago is at the core of Gates' aesthetics and politics.
This is particularly evident in works like In Event of a Race Riot, where the water-spraying of peaceful Civil Rights demonstrators in Alabama in 1963 is represented through decommissioned fire hoses stacked inside gilt box frames, or Twelve Ballads for Huguenot House, where a series of musical offerings performed by Gates' band, The Black Monks of Mississippi, blessed the shipping and subsequent reuse of deconstructed materials from Dorchester for the inhabitation of the Huguenot House in Kassel during the 13th edition of Documenta.
A Professor and Director of Arts and Public Life in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Chicago, Gates was the recipient of awards and grants from Creative Time, the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, the Joyce Foundation, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, and Artes Mundi. He has exhibited and performed at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York ; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago ; the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London ; and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art ; his work was presented in major international surveys like the Whitney Biennial of American Art (2010), Documenta 13 in Kassel (2012), Prospect 3, New Orleans (2014), the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and the 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015).
Presented all together for the first time in this book, Gates' projects bridge the gap between art and life and encourage change by reaching beyond a traditional art audience. In the Interview Caroline Becker discusses with Gates the educational responsibility of his art and how it resonates within American cultural history. Lisa Yun Lee's Survey examines in detail Gates' principal projects, framing the sociopolitical context in which they have originated, expanded, and evolved.
Achim Borchardt-Hume focuses on A Maimed King, Gates' personal take on the readymade concept and arguably one of his post powerful vvorks to date. Artist's Writings feature poems from Gate's personal journal, including Jet (2015), Ebony (2015) and Yamaguchi (2008).