Theaster Gates: Black Vessel | Artist Spotlight

i remember the first time that i fired a wood kiln i remember just this feeling of camaraderie and friendship as we fired the kiln and i remember thinking clay made it possible for us to have to spend 24 hours with each other often i'm trying to figure out how do you create the social situation without being preoccupied with the creation of a social situation and the way you do that is you put beautiful things and beautiful people together and let them do their thing black vessel in this way is the celebration of the relationship between vessels and gathering you make beautiful vessels and those vessels will cause people to gather in my studio itself it is also the empty vessel waiting to be filled with things that are negative to become the outpour for others the studio really is the place where things are converted where value is reassigned in the studio clay allows me the most play you know that in a way the fire is making all these other decisions that i can't make so i really enjoy just losing the burden of a certain kind of art art historical narrative i get to just make things let all the meaning stuff happen after we're at about 2000 degrees and it's hot it's this point where all of the alchemical work is starting to happen it's just one of my one of my favorite activities to watch all of this seemingly unusable stuff become fuel to make beautiful things [Music] glazing lighting the kiln they're all small tasks but there are moments when the tasks accumulate and they mean more than their parts so i try to light the kiln with as much passion as i do making the object as much passion as i do delivering the speech i know every day that it's as i like it it's as it's supposed to be black vessel is my opportunity to talk about these two early connections for me how the world of craft has shaped how i make and then how the invisible world or the spiritual world how it informs my desire to make meaning from things the work was born out of a tribute it was a way of paying homage to the work of my dad it didn't feel like art at the time but i knew that i was watching a master craftsman at the same time that my dad was helping to ensure that a roof didn't leak he was also ensuring the roof when left was beautiful you know the kiln is such a kind of magical dangerous machine that metabolizes all these parts that don't make sense at the same time that i'm in this extremely controlled environment of fire the south side is on fire sirens are going all around the same intensity in this controlled cauldron that intensity feels reflected a block away from me on stoney island [Music] the civil tapestries their intent was seduction not guilt after the seduction when you're fascinated by something that looks like a cousin to a pre-existing genre of art history then the story would grab while making these things that were intentionally precise intentionally seductive they also had off cuts the nozzles from these hoses what felt like a kind of shrapnel the fire hose that was used to do great things could actually be one of the most demeaning and horrific weapons used in american history the caged hose works could be the evidence of that past you

Channel: Gagosian

Views: 7,741

Rating: 4.888268 out of 5

Keywords: Gagosian, Gallery

Id: 3OWRGkXaQi0

Length: 7min 4sec (424 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2020