Theaster Gates. Ground Rules (Scrimmage), 2015; wood flooring; 100 3/16 x 147 2/16 in. Courtesy of White Cube. Photo: Ben Westoby.

Gates makes excellent use of language to push otherwise familiar formal constructions toward a heavier kind of political poetry, and the title of the exhibition works on political, personal, and formal levels. In the most obvious sense, the exhibition speaks to the right of citizens to come together as a body, an element of political freedom enshrined in many declarations of human rights, including the First Amendment of the American Constitution. Freedom of Assembly also addresses a defining element of Gates’ practice: his freedom to compose new meanings using materials that, like ready-mades, bring embedded meanings and histories of their own. The title further references the artist’s creative freedom, after six years of aggressive accomplishment, to experiment with his own traditions as he consolidates his place as an artist.

The thirty-six works spread among White Cube’s three galleries could function as separate exhibitions. In South Gallery I, the artist presents materials harvested from a recently closed hardware store on Chicago’s south side, reassembled into explicit formal homages to artists of the contemporary canon. Atlas (2015) is a series of ascending forklift arms that make a clear reference to Donald Judd. Shrug (2015) is a micro-installation of bricks stacked on a well-made pallet that looks like a Carl Andre sculpture ready for transport. On the opposite wall, Tiki Teak (2014), a shingled roof missing a rectangular notch, is very Gordon Matta-Clark. Freedom of Assembly (2015) is a wood-and-pegboard re-creation of Brancusi’s Endless Column (1918) that penetrates the gallery’s ceiling to continue upward, perhaps infinitely. While tasteful and excellently composed, few exceed their references. Cabinet Work (2015), a line of ten mostly emptied display cases, is the least specific in its reference (Mark Dion), yet best sustains imagination and interpretation.

Theaster Gates. Atlas, 2015; metal; 16 arms, each: 49 3/4 x 7 x 4 in. Courtesy of White Cube. Photo: Ben Westoby.

The presence of such obvious citations exposes a problem at the heart of Gates’ practice as a maker of art objects whose production functions subversively as the financial engine for his more ambitious community projects in Chicago and elsewhere. Much has been written about Gates’ mobilization of the art market as a kind of fundraiser for privatized social programs, but less has been said about the power of this scheme to pardon any failings in the works themselves.

A generous interpretation of the works in South Gallery 1 would locate Gates’ power as an artist in inserting the narratives embedded in hardware-store materials into the history of art itself. However, given that each sculpture occurs within the space of White Cube, whose name itself is a complicit nod to the validating power of an institutional space to make art by claiming itself as a container for art, Gates’ concern to promote the art status of the materials he uses through formal homage is misplaced. As a result, the sculptures look too much like packaged formal solutions to the problem of art-historical inscription, too much like replacements for a lack of formal inventiveness independent from historical scaffolding.

The two works in White Cube’s 9x9x9 Gallery, Ground Rules (Scrimmage) (2015) and Ground Rules (Free Throw Possibility) (2015), are the exhibition’s best. These stunning painting-sized works were made from the reclaimed gymnasium flooring of a Chicago public school. Shuffled and reassembled, the new surface bears all the scuffs and scrapes of a well-used gym, while the red and black paint of its basketball court appear now as abstractions that stutter across the picture plane. While it is unlikely that these materials came from one of the fifty underperforming public schools closed in 2012 by Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the associations with this critical moment in the city’s history are plain and powerful. Together with the remains of the hardware store in Gallery I, the material associations in Freedom of Assembly assert the fragile spatiality of society, serving as a reminder that all spaces are subject to economic and political forces.

Theaster Gates. Diagonal Bitumen, 2014; wood, rubber, and tar; 96 ¾ x 120 ¼ x 5 1/8 in. Courtesy of White Cube. Photo: Ben Westoby.

The works in White Cube’s South Gallery II exemplify Gate’s inclination to mine his personal history for studio experimentation, though this is a less rewarding project. Appropriating the material legacy of his father’s roof-tarring profession, Gates produced thirteen large and unremarkable canvasses of various roofing substrates smeared with thick black tar. In the past, Gates has mobilized this material for its political potential (in his last exhibition at White Cube Bermondsey, he partially tarred a Civil Rights-era fire truck); however, the teeth of dissent seem all but pulled from this group of paintings. Likewise, the sculptures Covered Vessel (2015) and Glazed Vessel (2015) are chunky clay pots wrapped with tar-soaked roofing materials, sitting atop reclaimed and expertly rough-cut wooden pedestals. They are beautiful objects, though here too Gates appears to have left any larger ambitions in the other galleries.

Freedom of Assembly is an unusually straightforward exhibition for Theaster Gates, relying too heavily on the merits of his sculptures independent from the larger projects in Chicago and elsewhere for which Gates is better known and appreciated. Though his sculptures are the material basis (and fundraising element) for this expanded practice, they can’t sustain interest on sculptural terms, on formal terms, apart from that wider practice.

Theaster Gates: Freedom of Assembly is on view at White Cube Gallery through July 5, 2015.

Theaster Gates, Double Cross, 2013. Courtesy of the artist, White Cube, and Kavi Gupta. Installation view, Theaster Gates: 13th Ballad, MCA Chicago, 2013. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

Gates’s installation enhances the atrium like no installation I’ve seen in the same space. Normally a sun drenched thoroughfare, the spacious multi-story glass reception area directs patrons to the two galleries on the main floor or to the café overlooking the museum’s sculpture garden. With Gates’s additions, the space is transformed into a kind of secular church, though perhaps ‘transform’ isn’t quite the right word. Augmented with thirteen pews repurposed from the University of Chicago’s Bond Chapel, an altar, and a giant double horizontal axis cross, the installation calls attention to the already cathedral-like quality of architect Josef Paul Kleihues’s entrance, while also referencing the migratory history of religious communities. Gates’s work fits so well within the museum architecture, one might think Kleihues himself commissioned the installation.

According to museum literature, the row of pews was recently removed from Bond Chapel as an inclusive gesture to open floor space for Muslim students to pray. Here, the pews offer a place to rest, reflect, or gather and discuss the work in the adjacent galleries, as a group of students was doing on the afternoon I visited the show. The slightly worn edges of the benches suggest a history of use from their previous life. Similarly, Stage Floor (2012), an assemblage of white rectangles hanging on a nearby wall is still dusty and stained from recent activity. Evidence of time and use places Gates’s objects within a continuum of purpose, serving as a reminder that everything has a past and could have a future when given the opportunity. This connection to accumulated history, purpose, and reactivation is reminiscent of the artist’s past work, particularly, Dorchester Projects (2009), an extensive undertaking in which Gates converted abandoned buildings in his South Side neighborhood into an artist residency, library, soul food kitchen, and community space.

Theaster Gates, Double Cross, 2013. Courtesy of the artist, White Cube, and Kavi Gupta. Installation view, Theaster Gates: 13th Ballad, MCA Chicago, 2013. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

Functionally, the pews also point the way toward Altar (2012), a long, simple table partially comprised of the faces of old filing drawers; followed by the three-story-high wall of windows facing east toward Lake Michigan, where Gates has installed Double Cross (2013). The twice-crossed cross is complex symbol. On one hand, the title is critical, perhaps alluding to the complicated history of religious inclusion for non-Protestant communities living in America. And yet, the cross is composed of plywood crates containing the umbrellas, saw blade, plates, pitchers, toothpaste tubes, tambourine, and other items that Gates and his team utilized during their one hundred days in Kassel. These individually lit compartments function as reliquaries for objects imbued with the history of Huguenot House’s reconstruction, making the piece a secular symbol of renewal. Double Cross also lights the way upward, toward the skylights that surely go unnoticed by the casual museum-goer given that most of the action below only exists sixty inches from the floor. In assembling these elements so deftly within the architecture, Gates activates the atrium from floor to ceiling, converting a transitional space into a destination in itself, one that’s rich with overlapping and complex histories.

Installation view of Theaster Gates: 13th Ballad at MCA Chicago, 2013. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

On the fourth floor, more objects from Kassel are displayed next to monitors and a video projection documenting the performances and creation of Huguenot House. The projection features the musical improv group Black Monks of Mississippi pounding out an epic soul jam for a dancing throng of young bohemians at Huguenot House. Further on, the video picks up with the Monks chanting Nina Simone-esque improvisations while one performer poetically recounts the horrors of African slaves transported to America, again emphasizing history, migration, and the revitalizing potential of creativity. The video offers a taste of the life and energy Gates and his collaborators produced during their time at dOCUMENTA.

Also on display is Migration Rickshaw for Sleeping and Playing (2013), a cart made of found components and stuffed with bedding and pillows. The cart is held together with duct tape printed with the words “Allan Kaprow_Art As Life,” referencing the title of Alex Potts’s book about Kaprow’s praxis, which stressed creating art not for museums and galleries, but within the context of everyday life. Gates is at his best when this axiom is put into practice. Within the fourth floor gallery, works like Migration Rickshaw are robbed of their potential functionality. Gates may assemble objects, but his true art lies within the action his creativity fosters, as is evident from his Huguenot House video, the atrium installation, and his continued efforts on the South Side. Fortunately, the artist has a series of MCA activities and performances planned for the summer.

Oddly enough, Gates’s exhibition opened less than a week before the Chicago School Board decided to shutter fifty public schools, many of which are on the city’s South Side. Given that the artist has an outstanding knack for building community and revitalizing neglected resources, maybe his next project should be running for mayor, although perhaps that might slow him down from building so much.

Theaster Gates’s 13th Ballad will be on view at MCA Chicago till October 6, 2013.

After meeting at dOCUMENTA (13), Longe and I spoke about his experiences in Kassel working with an array of participating artists, artistic director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, and of his overall opinions on the 100-day exhibition.

You originally came from San Francisco to Kassel with the intention just to visit the dOCUMENTA (13), what was your plan and how did it change?

Yes, I really like Germany. I came to here to research schools and visit friends. I had been in Frankfurt and Cologne and a few other cities before coming to Kassel. There is absolutely no way I could come to Europe in 2012 and miss dOCUMENTA(13). It is one of the most important and large scale exhibitions of its kind and this year it is massive. I planned to come for 4 days. On the the third day I was invited to a BBQ at the Huguenot Haus (a live-in project by Theaster Gates and many other collaborators). I almost didn’t go as I felt funny attending alone. Last minute I decided to go. I instantly met three nice students from Mainz who said that Gareth Moore’s project could really use a hand. I just went there and started. I planned 2 weeks and it quickly became 50 days! I have met so many people, this has been one of the best experiences of my life. Also seeing an exhibition like this from the inside and not having to rush fully changes the experience.

12 Ballads for the Huguenot House, Theaster Gates

Which dOCUMENTA(13) artists have you interacted with and/or worked for?

I helped build a small one room house for Gareth Moore’s main assistant, Brodie Kitchen. I’ve been helping out with general things through my stay. Gareth has a large plot in the Karlsaue Park. He built a house there and has been living in it for almost 2 years. The plot now includes many structures and shrines all made from found material. To many people’s surprise Gareth is a very clean cut and sharp fellow. He is such a nice person and really respectful to everyone who helped on the project. I have also been helping on Pedro Reyes‘s project.  Stuart Ringholt is just wonderful, Andrea Büttner is also very personable and so smart, as are Cevdet Erec, Theaster Gates, Jan Verwoert, Tue Greenfort–every artist I have met has been so humble and kind.

Sanatorium, Pedro Reyes

What have your experiences been like working with Pedro Reyes at the Sanatorium? What is the context for his project?

I started as an assistant for this piece about one month ago working mostly with a wonderful group of students from an academy in Geneva. I haven’t interacted with Pedro in person, just via Skype. He is a really nice guy. The piece is a Sanatorium offering what he calls “cures for urban illnesses.” While I can be skeptical of artists who think they can do something like this, I do think this project is very interesting. It is a participatory experience in which my friends and I act as therapists and engage with the viewers by doing a series of potentially therapeutic activities. The work is something between art, a game, and therapy, mostly playful but super intense at times. There are eight therapies offered and we all take turns doing them with people. I think there are a few really good ones and some not so good. This piece was first shown or performed at the Guggenheim in New York. I think it is much different here with an average of 7,000 viewers per day coming to see documenta. There has been some serious struggle with this project but, after all it has been successful.

What is the general make up of the artist assistants at dOCUMENTA(13)? 

There are plenty of paid assistants and dancers and facilitators who have been working on the exhibition for years. Most of the large scale participatory pieces, educational group pieces, ongoing performance series, and live-in sites have groups of assistants who are from art schools all over Europe. It is part of what Carolyn (Christov-Bakargiev) calls the Maybe Education Program. Everyone is sooo great. Spending a condensed amount of time in such close quarters with young artists and peers from all over the world has been unbelievable. The exchange of ideas and critical thought is impressive, not to mention the social aspect, cooking, and dancing. The experience has brought so many diverse people together.

How were your overall impressions of the exhibitions? Do you have a favorite work?

My impressions are biased. Living here has changed everything; I have an unlimited pass, I have had plenty of time to see the show and to return to my favorite pieces. I think it is impossible to choose favorites, the show is too expansive. Being here feels like a gift or something. In general I find it awe-inspiring. It is so diverse, housing every kind of art you could imagine. Clean formal works, totally funky stuff, highly conceptual, huge all-encompassing installations, tons of outdoor sculpture, writing, film, political work, participatory works, and pieces that totally blur the line between art and life so far that even I question whether or not it is art. I would say documenta entirely challenged and changed my formerly narrow definition of contemporary art. It was Carolyn’s intention to include things that aren’t really claiming to be art (for instance the research and technological devices of quantum physicist (Anton Zeilinger) and through this context everything can be totally reconsidered.

Have you had any interactions directly with Carolyn? 

Yes I have met her twice. In general I like her. I pet her dog. I can’t help but be impressed and humored by her whole persona. She is such a diva. I think all of her knowledge resides in her large tightly-curled shiny hair. Sometimes when she speaks she can be quite direct and other times she will be so rude and weird. You will see her in a lecture/discussion and she will be texting and interjecting comments that are highly generalized. I think she is totally acting all the time. One-on-one she is really nice, but I think she has strange social skills. Chus Martinez (her second-in-command) is more impressive. She is quite smart and pulls immense knowledge from her brain with ease. She also has a great sense of humor. Once she spoke with six of my friends and I for almost an hour telling us exactly what she saw to be happening in the Arts and describing every aspect, trend, collectors curatorial practice, the market etc. At one point she referred to Europe as “a festival of cynicism.”

Artistic Director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

What is your general feeling regarding Carolyn’s concept or “non-concept?”

At first I was quite unsure about the language describing the show. The theme is simultaneously a total cop-out and totally on point. It is easy to arrive at the idea that art is about everything and nothing. By nature, art is contradictory and often a dialectic; it seems so obvious. When you get into what Chus and Carolyn are doing, you begin to understand how ambitious the show is. It is a show that illustrates art itself in all forms. It operates as a meta or micro version of the world in a way just giving in to the natural phenomenon of disorder and struggle. There are many terms used that I disagree with. There are also many very concrete sub themes like destruction and recreation. Chus explains the “non-concept” in a way that really makes sense. It is actually meant as a critique of the entire curatorial method that has dominated the last few decades. She notes that curators produce theory laden shows. Her stance is, how can one accurately curate a show around a theory when, 1 – the art is not yet in the space and 2 – art is entirely subjective. The artwork itself is a theory, therefore theory should not be applied to it and it totally limits the work if the viewer sees it through the curators chosen theme. This is all my interpretation, but I think that while a show like this can’t fully do what it claims, Chus and Carolyn are challenging the institutions of contemporary art.

Several of the sectors of dOCUMENTA(13) experienced strikes by the workers. What brought on these frustrations or issues among the artist assistants?

A show of this scale breeds frustration and disorganization. It would have been easy to select less artists and book less programing. I truly believe Carolyn wanted the show to function this way. I think it was totally her intention to lay the show out in confusing way and to create stress; it is all part of the exhibition. She even said she likes that nobody can see everything. Of course documenta went over budget so in the case of the press office, 10 or more long-term employees were fired with no notice and the whole team went on strike. At the Sanatorium it was a combination of dealing with the viewing public that are often quite rude, a poorly structured schedule, plus the fact that many students were upset about working without pay (I didn’t really identify with that as we had agreed to work for free). We had a system which was not working. The project became like a Mcdonald’s, people just selecting off a menu, and us being too rushed to really get in depth with them. Many assistants were frustrated and left. It got hectic. Pedro never came for the second half and his lack of presence made everyone feel less connected to the project. One day, Carolyn came by and spoke with us. She was very nice. What she said shows her interest in stirring things up. She told us, “If you are unhappy, go on strike.” Then we did, although not everyone agreed and several people lost interest. In the end it brought us more together. It even brought us together with administrate staff.

Your newest plan is to stick around Kassel and continue to create work, what is it about this town that you find inspiring and conducive to your development as an artist?

Well I wouldn’t say it is the art scene. As far as I can tell the only art scene is the Kunsthochschule  (art school). I will be hanging out there for sure. Kassel is really cheap. I have access to the documenta Archive, which is incredible. From Kassel it is easy to get to many other cities, plus things are really quiet after documenta and I will be able to get some artwork done. It will be a good transition place.

What direction do you see your work taking? Are you drawing inspiration from the themes of documenta?

I can’t say specifically how documenta has inspired me but I think the experience changed my life. I am inspired on so many levels. Hanging out with all these young artists has been great. I am going to start a project with a Swiss friend I met named Vianney Fivel and it will be much more performative that any of my work has been. I think the people back home will just have to see what happens. I will be challenging myself to do some really different things! But first, I will start with a series of drawings that will be quite simple and a bit nonsensical.

Gerhard's Müller Behind Plastic, Graphite on paper, mounted on panel, Hunter Longe

Theaster Gates, Love Seat, cement, wood, fabric and glass, 2011, courtesy of Kavi Gupta Chicago | Berlin

Outmoded by street festivals, public music events, movies in the parks, and trips to the beach, Chicago’s summertime visual art scene is a desert of options. Dominated by loosely-themed group shows and limited gallery hours, art spaces choose to focus on scheduling studio visits and re-strategizing programming, all but closing their doors to the public.

Kavi Gupta is arguably no exception, but the lure of the gallery artists in their simply and straightforwardly-titled group show, Summer, up through September 3, was enough to draw my interest. Stepping out of the 104 degree, 100% humid exuberance of a Chicago August, into the stark, air-conditioned quiet of the gallery space, the works in this show reflect a shared, and for me mutual, sense of wildness contained.

Theaster Gates‘s sculptural pieces, uniform stacks of plates entombed in box-shaped cement, yearn to be unpacked, freed from their confinement. While Loveseat, the tattered, decripit, side-view of a sofa also encased in cement speaks more to times past, loss, decay, and eventual interment, but with a nod toward the savage process of decomposition controlled.

Antonia Gurkovska Untitled (AG12) oil, acrylic, enamel paint, staples on canvas, 2011, courtesy of Kavi Gupta Chicago | Berlin

A large painting, Untitled, by Antonia Gurkovska unexpectedly reveals itself. Upon approach, pastel pours give way to vague art historically familiar figures undulating on a background of meticulous rows of staples. Something about it is both primitive and prim in a juxtaposition that evokes a feeling of being let in on a secret–whispers devious yet restrained.

Curtis Mann, Night Sky, chemically altered chromogenic development print, 2011, courtesy of Kavi Gupta Chicago | Berlin

Curtis Mann reliably delivers with his Night Sky, a mural grid of chemically treated photos, as, moving up off the horizon line, stars become tiny explosions, become splatters of light. It is spectacular and disturbing in its dazzling and subsequent collapsing of the image.

Nathaniel Donnett, Treason in the Land of Melanosites, mixed media, 2011, courtesy of Kavi Gupta Chicago | Berlin

And finally, Nathaniel Donnett‘s collage-drawing, a boy, his head enigmatically composed of a black trash bag, carrying a giant, obviously burdensome chess piece. I don’t quite have it all figured out, but the title, Treason in the Land of Melanosites, makes a nod to skin pigmentation somehow gone awry, the child’s t-shirt references Tutenkhamen and (Michael?) Jackson, among others, with a prominent gold necklace stating “King” hanging around the chess piece’s de-facto neck. I struggle to put together pieces of a puzzle that isn’t yet complete, but one thing’s sure: wherever this kid is going with the strain of his gamepiece, it feels strangely hopeful. Donnett’s work will be featured in a solo show at Kavi Gupta in September, an opportunity to pick up more clues from this sphinx.

And with that, I head back out into the heat.