Theaster Gates

“Black Vessel” marks Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates’s first solo show in New York. Although centered around the idea of the vessel—a container of “the concrete, the symbolic, and the spiritual,” per the gallery—the exhibition highlights Gates’s impressively wide-ranging practice.

Newly made ceramic vessels, which evoke traditional African pottery, are on view; are as large-scale paintings and mixed-media sculptures, including Walking Prayer (2018), a collection of bound and gilded periodicals drawn from the Black press. In addition, a sound installation scored by the Black Monks, Gates’s own musical ensemble, can be heard in the gallery space.