Theaster Gates

L'oeuvre du peintre Jean-Michel Basquiat, mort d’une overdose en 1988 à seulement 27 ans, bat aujourd’hui des records dans les salles de vente. Retour sur le parcours atypique d'un gosse de Brooklyn devenu superstar.

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."

“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.

High-definition video art from Theaster Gates

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.