The New Museum in New York had an exhibit of selected works by Theaster Gates: mainly archival installations and ceramics. The works had a simple elegance that amplified their depth. The ceramic colors - shades of brown and black mostly - and even more so the textures, were delicate, ambiguous, and strikingly absorbing. The wood sculptures were on the surface, simple and elegant but on closer inspection, ambiguous. They were made of wood from the old flooring to the Park Avenue Armory, and therefore full of ghosts.
In the notes for one of the archival installations, Art Histories 2019, the slides of art works in the archive "show how art history needs to come to terms with its own exclusionary biases."
