Chicago – Theaster Gates’ latest exhibition, When the Clouds Lift: Reflections and Recovery in the Johnson Archiveswould give all but the most radical archivists a heart attack.
It’s also incredibly exciting, filled with novel presentation strategies, bold creative repurposings, and plenty of dark humor, all done with a great aesthetic. The exhibition marks the artist’s most extensive engagement with furniture, objects and images from the now-defunct Johnson Publishing Company, which long documented black American life in magazines ebony and injection. Founded in 1942 by John H. and Eunice Johnson, JPC was, at its peak, the largest black-owned media enterprise in the world. All three floors of Stone Island Art Bank will be on display until mid-March when the dark clouds dissipate Not to be missed.
There are an assortment of vintage custom furniture, heirlooms, and architectural fragments from the former JPC headquarters on Michigan Avenue; sculptures that Gates created using JPC journals; other art he created; and some enlarged fashion photos. ebony Staff photographer; and Gates’ personal collection of works by Kerry James Marshall, Buckley L. Hendrix, David Hart and others.
The “Fax Cabinet of Women’s Origin Stories,” a free-standing artwork that greets viewers at the entrance to the Art Bank, does have the potential to become a new model for displaying two-dimensional archival material. It’s essentially an elegant open shelving system that houses about 800 photos of black women that Gates culled from a photo gallery. ebony and injection Archives and permanently framed; visitors peruse the images and decide which images to display. The day I was there, the selection included a scientist working in a lab, an African tribal woman and her child, a hair salon in operation, various singers singing, and a stylish farmer feeding Her cock.
most of the rest when the dark clouds dissipate Dedicated to showcasing scenes arranged throughout the building, some clever and some looking like leftover furniture stuck in corners. JPC carpet fragments fill one end of the gallery. Another features John H. Johnson’s personal fitness equipment that looks very much like a minimalist sculpture, a comical effect enhanced by the monochromatic elevator lobby panels in front of them. Bespoke bookcases in a range of luxurious finishes are particularly well appointed: On a long marble sideboard, two tall Malian masks flank “2000s and a touch of the ’60s” framed by Gates’ steel Modernist bas-relief, copy of a bound volume. injection; Nearby, a red crocodile-skin-covered cabinet stacked on a platform holds a cart filled with a seemingly haphazard assortment of African and other metal objects, including an antelope head whose elegance matches that of a This is echoed by a large framed photo of Zhang wearing a skimpy model. An orange evening suit with a feather collar hung above it.
The effect is like a crazy house museum. However, unless you ask for a copy of the exhibition listing or are very knowledgeable about mid-century design and contemporary art, don’t forget to identify one thing or the other. There are no captions for the exhibition, just an introductory wall text. On the one hand, wow! Wall labels are a destructive addition to the immersive art viewing experience, and they’re somewhat beside the point in a practice like Gates, which is all about imaginative reuse, in In this practice, you only need to know the general origin of things. On the other hand, didactic could have provided some details that illuminate African American history and simply respected the work of others.
Museums and even most commercial galleries have a hard time getting artists to do this kind of thing, but when you have your own art gallery you can do what you want. Stony Island Arts Bank, a once crumbling savings and loan building that the city of Chicago sold to Gates for $1 in 2012, is the crown jewel of Gates’ dream empire, with support from his nonprofit Redevelopment Foundation operations. Rebuild also manages Gates’ other real estate ventures, in which various distressed properties in his South Side neighborhoods have been renovated and repurposed as public cultural spaces.
Gates is also an accomplished ceramicist, a charismatic performer, and the custodian of numerous archives, including 60,000 glass lantern slides in the University of Chicago’s art history department, the vinyl record collection of legendary house DJ Frankie Knuckles, and 4,000 examples of “negrobilia” include the Edward J. Williams Collection. At one point, he bought the entire inventory of a local hardware store that was going out of business. Gates kept these artifacts, but to a greater extent, he used them as material and inspiration for his own artwork. Historical accuracy is irrelevant. The exception is his faithful reconstruction of the gazebo on the Art Bank lawn where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by Cleveland police.
The Art Bank’s elegant glass-walled space also houses Johnson Publishing Company’s 12,000-volume reference library. Gates and other JPC rescuers arrived at the request of CEO Linda Johnson Rice, the daughter of the founder. Rice was forced to liquidate most of the company’s assets in the early 2010s. The book tells how Gates met Rice johnson publishing storya book produced for the artist’s first presentation of JPC objects at the Art Bank in 2018. Iterations of his work using the archive have also appeared at the Walker Art Center, Gropius Baugh, the Prada Foundation, and the Spelman and Colby School of Art. when the dark clouds dissipate is a combination of everything from these shows and more, and it certainly won’t be the last. Johnson Publishing Company continues.
Theaster Gates: When the Clouds Lift: Reflections and Recovery in the Johnson Archives The exhibition continues through March 16 at Stony Island Art Bank (6760 Stony Island Blvd., Chicago, IL). The exhibition is part of Art & Design Chicago, presented by the Reconstruction Foundation and organized by artists.
