Theaster Gates

Рождение : 1973-08-28, Chicago, Illinois, USA

История

Theaster Gates is an American social practice installation artist and a professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where he still lives and works.

Фильмы

A Clay Sermon
Director
“In the beginning was clay. Clay was without form,” he declares in his 2021 film A Clay Sermon. Making pots is important as a religious and social experience, as well as a creative one; Gates’ identity is bound up with making, researching and teaching about ceramics and its history. “We love the wheel,” he sings as he throws a pot while his group the Black Monks improvise snatches of jazz and gospel. The film was made at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts, a former brick factory in Montana where, earlier this year, Gates was artist-in-residence. The process – from digging the clay to working on the wheel and firing the pot – is filmed as though it were an alchemical ritual; pacing round the derelict premises in his long dark coat, the artist resembles a priest.
Black Art: In the Absence of Light
Self
An introduction to the work of some of the foremost Black visual artists working today, inspired by the late David Driskell's landmark 1976 exhibition, "Two Centuries of Black American Art."
America
Co-Producer
A cinematic omnibus rooted in New Orleans, challenging the idea of black cinema as a "wave" or "movement in time," proposing instead a continuous thread of achievement.
Basquiat: Rage to Riches
Self (Artist)
This film tells Jean-Michel's story through exclusive interviews with his two sisters Lisane and Jeanine, who have never before agreed to be interviewed for a TV documentary. With striking candour, Basquiat's art dealers - including Larry Gagosian, Mary Boone and Bruno Bischofberger - as well as his most intimate friends, lovers and fellow artists, expose the cash, the drugs and the pernicious racism which Basquiat confronted on a daily basis. As historical tableaux, visual diaries of defiance or surfaces covered with hidden meanings, Basquiat's art remains the beating heart of this story.
Billy Sings Amazing Grace
Director
High-definition video art from Theaster Gates