Gagosian Hong Kong to Present 'Surrogate,' New Works by Theaster Gates, Opening November 19
Gagosian announced on November 13 that 'Surrogate,' an exhibition of new works by Chicago artist Theaster Gates, will open at the gallery in Hong Kong on November 19 and run through February 27, 2027, at 7/F Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Central, Hong Kong. A press preview is set for 5 to 6 p.m. on November 19, followed by an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m.
The surrogate has been ever present in Gates's practice. According to Gagosian, Gates used the bones of an abandoned Chicago building to restore the Huguenot House in Kassel, Germany, for Documenta 13, presented fire hoses as a proxy for a conversation on civil rights, deployed tar to stand in for the complex relationship between father and son, and repurposed historic archives to counter the invisibility of Black people. Seemingly ordinary objects, in his hands, reveal a depth of emotion and meaning.
For the Hong Kong exhibition, Gates looks back to his earlier work, reconfiguring elements of his own visual vocabulary in new arrangements and mediums. He imprints the decommissioned fire hoses of his Civil Tapestries series, begun in 2011, into clay slabs, carrying the paintings' striated patterns into a new medium. His 'gym floor' works, initiated in 2014 from varnished wood planks reclaimed from school gymnasium floors, here rearrange athletic markings into graphic lines reminiscent of his late-2010s paintings based on statistical infographics of Black life created by sociologist W. E. B. DuBois and his students in 1900.
The exhibition also includes a clay 'handbag,' extending Gates's exploration of the vessel, from clay pots to architectural structures, as a means of carrying and protecting contents and as the center of ritual processes. A trio of Tar Paintings, a series begun in 2011 and made of overlapping industrial roofing panels similar to the materials of his father's trade as a professional roofer, each introduces representational or symbolic elements, including the Chinese character for 'vista.'
Gagosian says that in 'Surrogate,' Gates transmutes common materials into sacred objects, revealing the extraordinary within the ordinary. Gates is also presenting 'African Still Life' at White Cube Seoul from November 4 to December 18, 2026.
Source: Gagosian
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：西斯特·盖茨2024年在东京森美术馆个展开幕活动上。美国驻东京大使馆摄，公共领域，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Theaster Gates at the opening of his Mori Art Museum exhibition in Tokyo, 2024. Photo by the Embassy of the United States in Tokyo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
