Artist Theaster Gates demonstrates his most compelling work when he creates space for ambiguity and viewer interpretation, inviting self-reflection rather than simply making direct connections for audiences. This artistic strength becomes evident through three concurrent exhibitions of his work currently on display in Chicago, where the multifaceted artist successfully dissolves traditional boundaries between roles as artist and collector, archivist and storyteller, ceramicist and interior decorator.
The complexity of Gates's socially engaged practice is showcased through three simultaneous presentations: "Oh, You've Got to Come Back to the City" at Gray Gallery, "Unto Thee" at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago where he teaches, and a site-specific installation "African Still Life 3: A Tribute to Patric McCoy and Marva Jolly" on view through July 2026. These exhibitions mark his first institutional show in Chicago, the city where he was born, raised, and has achieved his greatest social impact.
Gates is renowned for incorporating unconventional materials into his paintings, including decommissioned fire hoses, rubber, tar, and felt, which connect to both the legacies of racial injustice and his personal history, as his father worked as a roofer. Rather than using these materials to explore subjects, Gates transforms the materials themselves into the primary subject matter. Once viewers make these connections, which are often explained through wall labels or previous texts about the artist, little additional interpretation is required.
The artist shares with Marcel Duchamp an exceptional ability to aestheticize virtually anything, demonstrating brilliance in this approach. However, certain aspects of the work, particularly in the two Smart Museum exhibitions, can leave viewers feeling somewhat dissatisfied despite the technical excellence on display.
"African Still Life 3: A Tribute to Patric McCoy and Marva Jolly," located outside the main gallery space, features industrial steel shelving spanning an entire wall between two entrances, rising almost to the ceiling. The shelves display collections of vinyl records and African artifacts, including stools carved from single pieces of wood, with a custom sound system designed by OJAS (artist/designer Devon Turnbull) featuring two speakers positioned to one side.
While Gates invites viewers to consider different forms that art can take by preserving and displaying items that might otherwise be sold on eBay or discarded, the display feels somewhat flattened. With only the spines of records visible and dozens of nearly identical African artifacts, the installation lacks the depth that might allow for deeper engagement.
"Unto Thee" occupies the museum's largest gallery and includes paintings and ceramics by Gates placed among various objects he has received from individuals and institutions, including a credenza, a large section of slate roof, and a friend and colleague's book collection. At times, the arrangement feels like a furniture showroom where Gates demonstrates how his tarred paintings complement the credenza.
The Robert Bird Archive, consisting of 4,500 books, creates a voyeuristic experience where viewers peer into another person's life while being prevented from fully accessing the content. Visitors can only read the biographer's introduction and book covers, not the actual story of Bird's life or any marginal notes he may have written. These restrictions become obstacles that prevent full appreciation of Gates's larger project.
"Oh, You've Got to Come Back to the City" at Gray Gallery represents a significant pivot in Gates's approach. In the main gallery of this warehouse space, he has installed rows of evenly spaced, similarly sized marble columns, placing ceramic vessels on some of them. While the columns appear to be found objects, many have clearly been altered through cutting or slicing.
This installation offers multiple ways of interpretation without any single reading dominating the experience. The openness to interpretation feels markedly different from the didactic display of "Unto Thee," where connections between items and their intended meanings or references feel predetermined, requiring viewers simply to follow established paths rather than forge their own understanding.
"Oh, You've Got to Come Back to the City" reveals a different side of Gates, one where no overarching narrative exists and the subject matter remains intentionally unspecified. On one level, he engages with the pioneering sculptures of classical modernist Constantin Brancusi, though Gates's forms are grittier and arrive from a different direction. While Brancusi pared down his sleek, idealized shapes, Gates builds his black and slate gray clay forms from the ground up.
The surfaces of Gates's pieces appear to be made of stone or metal rather than clay, creating an ambiguity that encourages viewers to rethink the many associations he evokes in his work, from personal narratives to Black history. When he opens a gap between how something is perceived and what it actually is, he doesn't simply make connections for viewers but invites speculation and self-reflection.
This approach reveals the depth of Gates's ambition while making him vulnerable as an artist. It is precisely in these moments of uncertainty and open interpretation that he attains a different kind of artistic greatness, demonstrating that his most powerful work emerges when meaning remains fluid and viewers must actively engage in the interpretive process.
