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Black Vessel Exhibition by Theaster Gates  

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Black Vessel Exhibition by Theaster Gates  

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I always find myself returning to the vessel. It is part of the intellectual life force of my practice and it precedes all other forms of making.
-Theaster Gates

Gagosian is pleased to present Black Vessel, Theaster Gates's first-ever solo exhibition in New York.

Gates's oeuvre is among the most conceptually and materially rich in contemporary art, anchored equally in the canons of art history, the racial ideology of the Black diaspora, and the artist's own personal history. Through an art practice predicated on cultural reclamation and social empowerment, Gates exchanges and recharges objects and ideas, proposing the artwork as a communicating vessel or sacred reliquary of recollected histories, critical vitality, and shared experience. Traversing a broad range of formal approaches such as painting, sculpture, sound, and performance, as well as the processes of salvaging, archiving, and place making, he delivers penetrating social commentary on labor, material, spiritual capital, and commodity within a close examination of the urban condition.

The Brick Reliquaries (2020) are Gates's latest sculptural experiments. By firing bricks with a strong manganese content to an excessive 2300°F, the known properties of the materials are transformed into the mysteries of heat-based sculpture. In some instances, the material loses its specificity when pushed to such limits; in others, the carbide shelves inside the kiln fuse with the bricks and other sculptural elements that rest on them, becoming host to material transformation.

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Theaster Gates: Black Vessel, 555 West 24th Street, New York, October 10, 2020-January 23, 2021 | Gagosian

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I always find myself returning to the vessel. It is part of the intellectual life force of my practice and it precedes all other forms of making. -Theaster Gates Gagosian is pleased to present Black Vessel, Theaster Gates's first-ever solo exhibition in New York.

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Free creative tools for everyone. Including the world famous Brush Ninja animated gif maker. Use for free on your web browser on any device.

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Theaster Gates: How to revive a neighborhood: with imagination, beauty and art

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Theaster Gates, a potter by training and a social activist by calling, wanted to do something about the sorry state of his neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. So he did, transforming abandoned buildings to create community hubs that connect and inspire those who still live there (and draw in those who don't).

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Artist Theaster Gates turns Chicago’s empty spaces into incubators for culture

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https://carmengflahavin.tumblr.com/

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Martin Puryear talks about his sculpture

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Martin Puryear talks about his sculpture

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Martin Puryear addresses the interconnected narratives around the fabrication and installation of his works, as evidenced by his monumental public sculpture Big Bling (2016). "There's a story in the making of objects," said the artist in an archival interview with Art21. "There's a narrative in the fabrication of things, which to me is fascinating."

Because Puryear could not produce the colossal 40-foot sculpture in his studio, he worked with a team of expert manufacturers to realize his vision. At Unalam, a specialty lumber fabricator in Sidney, New York, glulam wood beams were bent to create the tight curves specified by his design. Jon Lash of Digital Atelier explains how materials such as chain link fencing were chosen to create an industrial-looking surface, which contrasts with the golden "bling" at the sculpture's peak.

More information and credits

Big Bling was on view in Madison Square Park in New York City through January 2017 and was later presented in Philadelphia through November 2017 by the Association for Public Art.

Credits

Director & Producer: Ian Forster. Consulting Producer: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Ian Forster & Susan Sollins. Editor: Morgan Riles. Camera: Ian Forster, Mead Hunt & John Marton. Sound: Jerry Stein. Artwork Courtesy: Martin Puryear & Matthew Marks Gallery. Special Thanks: Digital Atelier, Madison Square Park Conservancy & Unalam.

Art21 Exclusive 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.

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Licensing

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

Martin Puryear's objects and public installations-in wood, stone, tar, wire, and various metals-are a marriage of minimalist logic with traditional ways of making. Puryear's evocative, dreamlike explorations in abstract forms retain vestigial elements of utility from everyday objects found in the world. In the massive stone piece, Untitled, Puryear enlisted a local stonemason to help him construct a building-like structure on a ranch in northern California. On one side of the work is an eighteen-foot-high wall-on the other side, an inexplicable stone bulge. A favorite form that occurs in Puryear's work, the thick-looking stone bulge is surprisingly hollow, coloring the otherwise sturdy shape with qualities of uncertainty, emptiness, and loss.

"There's a narrative in the fabrication of things, which to me is fascinating."

Art21 is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization; all donations are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.

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Big Bling

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Reconstructions Architecture and Blackness in America

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Reconstructions Architecture and Blackness in America

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Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America | MoMA

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Exhibition. Feb 27–May 31, 2021. How does race structure America’s cities? MoMA’s first exhibition to explore the relationship between architecture and the spaces of African American and African diaspora communities, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America presents 11 newly commissioned works by architects, designers, and artists that explore ways in which histories can be made visible and equity can be built. Centuries of disenfranchisement and race-based violence have led to a built environment that is not only compromised but also, as the critic Ta-Nehisi Coates contends, “argues against the truth of who you are.” These injustices are embedded in nearly every aspect of America’s design—an inheritance of segregated neighborhoods, compromised infrastructures, environmental toxins, and unequal access to financial and educational institutions. Each project in the exhibition proposes an intervention in one of 10 cities: from the front porches of Miami and the bayous of New Orleans to the freeways of Oakland and Syracuse. Reconstructions examines the intersections of anti-Black racism and Blackness within urban spaces as sites of resistance and refusal, attempting to repair what it means to be American. Reconstructions features works by Emanuel Admassu, Germane Barnes, Sekou Cooke, J. Yolande Daniels, Felecia Davis, Mario Gooden, Walter Hood, Olalekan Jeyifous, V. Mitch McEwen, and Amanda Williams, as well as new photographs and a film by artist David Hartt. Reimagining Blackness and Architecture What does it mean to create and occupy space? In this new online course, you’ll hear directly from artists, architects, and scholars who explore the ways Blackness has shaped architecture and the built environment. Enroll today

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Acrylic on Canvas: Website- https://www.annaeliasart.com/

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Thick Paper or cardstock & scissors

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Water Tower Sculpture

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Vessel

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Tom Fruin’s Sculptures, Iconic Landmarks of Brooklyn