Theaster Gates Quotes

“I actually no longer use 'art' as the framing device. I think I'm just kind of practicing things, practicing life, practicing creation.”

— Theaster Gates

“The reality in the neighborhood that I live in is: if I don't constantly reconcile what I have against what other people don't, either I need to leave and be around other people who have what I have, or I'm constantly engaged in this kind of dynamic flow of opportunity and sharing.”

— Theaster Gates

“I have the willingness to think fully about where opportunities are and where they live.”

— Theaster Gates

“I want to spend my time between the creation of ideas and the creation of things.”

— Theaster Gates

Sometimes the creating that we do is creating a platform that allows other creative people to pitch in.

— Theaster Gates

“If we imagine that the only right that we have is to make commodifiable objects, then we limit our practice, and we limit the great potential for an understanding between collectors, curators and galleries.”

— Theaster Gates

“Everything is raw material to me. Land is raw material ... I take one form and transform it into other forms.”

— Theaster Gates

“There were a series of moments when I decided that art was important, and it was an important vehicle for me to express my interest in spaces.”

— Theaster Gates

I sometimes am challenged to imagine where the timbre of art should be. Should it be about objects that point to this current moment, or how objects are related to ideas of this current moment?

— Theaster Gates

“My first experience with the creative was mopping tar. If you let the tar sit, it can get cold pretty quickly. And because the mops are so heavy, you've got to dip it and then ride it really fast.”

— Theaster Gates

“It's not really about the material. It's about our capacity to shape things.”

— Theaster Gates

“I believe that beauty is a basic service.”

— Theaster Gates

“I think I'm a full-time artist, a full-time urban planner, and a full-time preacher with an aspiration of no longer needing any of those titles. Rather, I'm trying to do what for some seems a very messy work or a complicated work.”

— Theaster Gates

“I'm not a preacher, but I preach. I'm not a Buddhist, but I chant. I'm not race theorist, but I have questions and ponderances around the complexities of race and class and culture wherever I am.”

— Theaster Gates

The reason artists want to have works in museums is that we want our works to be seen by as many people as possible and we want our ideas to be understood in more complicated ways.

— Theaster Gates

“What I think museums do very well is that they say to a public, "We have some stuff that's worth looking at."”

— Theaster Gates

“The fact that the work is affirmed by the Museum of Contemporary Art I think sends continued signals that this is worth paying attention to, looking at, and understanding.”

— Theaster Gates

“It's really exciting to know that people want to use the house as a house and want to live there although it hasn't been a used, occupied space in 50 or 60 years.”

— Theaster Gates

“All kinds of performance practices have a certain register of power or solemnity.”

— Theaster Gates

I think I'm passionately allowing myself to be influenced by the things that are around me.

— Theaster Gates

“Modernism was influenced by what they call a primativist ethic.”

— Theaster Gates