(born in Chicago, Illinois in 1973)
Conqueror, 2015, wood, glazed clay and metal, installed dimension: 258.5 x 27 x 27 cm

Provenance:
White Cube, London (certificate available)
European Private Collection

Exhibited:
London, White Cube Gallery, Freedom of assembly,
29 April – 5 July 2015

Theaster Gates, with his cross-border artistic practice, is one of the most important voices of contemporary art. He works in various disciplines of spatial development, object art, sculpture and painting, performance and music. His artwork deals with the connection of art and society and its critical intervention and transformation. This is also portrayed through his urban upgrading projects, which he describes as „real estate art“. The study of black culture in America is another focus in the work of the Chicago-based artist.

In this work, which is more than 2.5m high and also comes from the exhibition at the White Cube, Gates echoes Constantin Brancusi, who in his Endless Column embraced pure forms, primitive totemic art, symbolic centrality – in short, a spiritual resuscitation, a return to higher metaphysical categories, with a work of freedom and hope. These themes are also very dear to Gates, who seals the modular repetition of forms with his Conqueror - a primitive and neutral pinnacle of the human.