Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Theaster Gates
American; 21st-century
Chicago, IL: Smart Museum of Art
75%
Soul Food Starter Kit. 2012. Ceramics, graphite, metal, wood, and graphite on wood
If there's an uncanny valley between art and life, this piece is busy trying to crawl up the slope towards life; that's mostly a good thing for it, aesthetically. The items that make up its sculptural component and the text that makes up its written component are all a tenuous mix of nondescript and vaguely arty, which facilitates the faux-readymade effect of the piece overall: were all these elements found or made? do they belong together or is their juxtaposition a "move" by the artist? (We know what the answer is, of course, but the arrangement of it all introduces more than enough plausible deniability.) More surrealism to the objects or more facility to the poem would make looking or reading rewarding on their own terms, but that would not have been in the artwork's interest: it's not a visual or textual work; its medium is the stuff that happens between mediums. Artfulness flits on and off this work but never quite alights, which is a very artful effect. (2025)