Theaster Gates Envisions Transcendent Possibilities in New Exhibition at Prada Rong Zhai
The artist's showcase of a winding creative journey opens this week in China Cabinet at the Fondazione Prada’s venue in Shanghai.
When Theaster Gates imagined his latest art project China Cabinet, he created a shape-shifting world to reflect the dimensions of his creative vision. In this three-chapter showcase—just opened at Prada Rong Zhai, the Fondazione Prada's historic space in Shanghai, China—the artist links his work with ceramics to his practices in the arts, performance, and activism. The exhibition’s narrative develops as Gates moves from guest to ghost to host between the show’s settings to offer a broader view of the artistic form.
“When considering the spaces at Rong Zhai, I created a space for my memories and used the exhibition as a platform to amplify these objects, so that they take on a new meaning in dialogue with one another,” Gates tells L’OFFICIEL. “China Cabinet is about exploring this subject deeply and from many lenses. It’s not only about making—it’s about reflecting within space.”
In the initial chapter of the exhibit, the artist presents himself as a guest with six vignettes related to themes within his work, such as reuse of materials, spirituality, and African-American civil rights. Panning between personal and collective experience, Gates engages the ceramics as characters in a tale yet to be told. “Clay plays a philosophical intention in the studio, and it allows me to understand all other materials. My engagement with brick and brick production conveys a necessary intersection between my interest in the handmade and my preoccupation with architecture,” he explains. “In the end, I’m most interested in the materiality of clay, its limitless possibilities, and the multiple stories that it retains.”
Then, in the next chapter of the presentation, Gates transitions to the role of ghost. Art pieces here are presented in two parts—as precious antiques in a boutique, and also as a reconstruction of the artist’s pottery workshop, revealing the process of their making. “Systems and structures have always fascinated me,” says the artist. “My work is deeply invested in the ways that things are governed, how they’re shaped, and how, depending on one’s position and positionality, the perspective of a particular subject changes.”
For the final chapter of the exhibit, the artworks are shown as they would be in a private home. In this scene, Gates becomes a host to the carefully-appointed space, which is designed to invite and welcome guests. It is in this turn of the exhibition that the show’s intention comes into full view, and audiences crystallize Gates’ vision for China Cabinet.
“What’s so important about this exhibition is that the exhibition-making can be about a dialogue between an artist, themselves, their objects, and their audience,” says Gates. “With China Cabinet, I wanted people to understand the variety of ways that I consider the material clay – how it shapes my aesthetic decisions, what I read about, and what I think about.”
As a multidisciplinary creator, Gates has long fused a wide range of influences and studies into his artwork. Born and raised in Chicago, he earned college degrees in urban planning and ceramics from Iowa State University, before focusing on pottery in Japan, and then earning an M.A. in fine arts and religious studies from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. In addition to his work as a professor of visual arts at the University of Chicago, Gates also founded the Rebuild Foundation, a non-profit organization for culture-driven redevelopment projects.
For an artist with deeply diverse horizons, China Cabinet brings together many of the inspirations that lend to Gates’ practice. As the audience accompanies him on this artistic journey, they are drawn into his history, process, and broader lens on the world around him. Gates looks to find the ‘life within things’ and through this exhibition, the values that define his art move between the spheres of life to present a transcendent view of art’s place in all our lives.
China Cabinet is on view through May 23, 2021 at Prada Rong Zhai in Shanghai, China.
