Theaster Gates

I was in the West loop on my way to go see Wendy White’s show Pick up a Knock at Andrew Rafacz. Unfortunately, the gallery was already closed, 20 minutes before their official closing time. That was rather disappointing, as I really wanted to see that show. It also seems unfair toward the artist, I thought. To assume that nobody will show up and hence lock the door before closing time seems….well. All I could do was poke my nose against the glass doors. The lure of this show for me was White’s conceptual approach. I was intrigued by the title and the preceding discussion we had in class about the term “flopping,” which is a “falling” technique used by a soccer player to deceive the referee into believing that a foul was played against him. Usually, a penalty follows in favor of the team against which the foul was “played out”. A twisted idea that gets performed out in front of millions of TV screens, dozen of thousand of fans and often entails great controversy or even riots among soccer fans from opposing teams. The idea of “failing” in order to gain an advantage or to achieve success is twisted and, according to White, also more common in European games. According to her, in the USA, players are more reticent to use this technique.

Dominic Molon, in his essay called In Praise of Gamesmanship connected the dots between soccer game strategies and White’s work practice by paraphrasing Oscar Wilde’s aphorism, “Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.” There is something about the poetic and the vile that was so gently fused in the show that I was about to see.

For, luckily, Kavi Gupta was still open. I decided to see Theaster Gates’s show Accumulated Affects of Migration. When entering the show, I was instantly taken to a different place: A place of nomadism, migration, transmission - Exile. What seemed to hold the objects together and what, at the same time alienated them was Nina Simone’s song “Feeling good” performed by the artist himself (I assume) - endlessly on loop, without ever taking a breather.

 The melancholic voice seemed strangely attracted and repelled from the objects sitting statically in space; their presence heavy; in fact, the melody as it filled the space, bestowed  a nostalgic human aura on each piece. In particularly striking for me was a set of five stairs that looked like deplaning ramps. One can imagine the feet that once have touched those stairs  that are now silently walking up gallery walls. Or, the dreams that were put into the tiny little wooden boxes, sitting inside an elongated wheelbarrow in the center of the exhibition space. Each box with its own décor. One I found particularly interesting: It was decorated with an old job ad from a German newspaper, in which a German Hotel was looking for a secretary, with good typewriter skills. The Hotel as a transitory space and the dream to go elsewhere in order to find a better life  is part of the migration story. A life packed up into tiny boxes. On wheels.  I stayed until the gallery closed.

On my way out, I was informed by one of the gallery assistants, that this show is an extension of Documenta 13, which I had not seen myself. For me, in that sense, it was a cold read. It is an exhibitions that creeps up on you the minute you enter and that leaves you with a deep impression - if migration is part of your life story.