Frieze London 2020 | Theaster Gates: 'Sweet Square of Dark Abyss'

White Cube Online: 7 – 16 October 2020 & Frieze Online: 9 – 16 October (Preview: 7 – 8 October)

White Cube Bermondsey: Saturday 10, Sunday 11 & Friday 16 October 2020. Advance booking required

Specially conceived for Frieze London 2020, Theaster Gates’ solo presentation with White Cube, titled ‘Sweet Square of Dark Abyss’, brings together a new body of work that has evolved out of the many collections in his care.

The installation features a new series of ‘book paintings’ and ‘spine works’ produced from custom-bound volumes chronicling the history of America, as well as monochrome ‘roofing works’ and ceramic vessels.

Gates’ collections constitute an encyclopaedia of the Black experience from the perspective of the white imagination and as viewed through the lens of the Edward J. Williams collection of ‘negrobilia’, whilst simultaneously examining Black cultural production over the past seventy years.

Forming a critical part of Gates’ larger artistic intention, namely, to exhume and make visible the power of Black consciousness, it uses visual tropes of the Western art canon wherever possible. Through an engagement with this rich archive, ‘Sweet Square of Dark Abyss’ asks us to imagine ourselves as deeper caretakers of our material legacies.