Sep 12, 2024

The sacred house of Theaster Gates

On view now at the AGO, Progress Palace is the American artist’s ode to house music

Installation view, Bright Signs: Spotlight on Video Art, July 3 - October 14, 2024. Art Gallery of Ontario. Works shown: Theaster Gates, House Heads Liberation Training, and Houseberg from Progress Palace, 2016 © Theaster Gates. Photo © AGO.

Theaster Gates is a remarkable artist. His expansive practice ranges from pottery to architecture, and hinges on his passion for enshrining the sacredness of objects, sites and cultural traditions central to the Black experience.

In 2016, the AGO presented How to Build a House Museum, Gates’s first Canadian solo exhibition and an interrogation of the legacy and narrative of house museums. The immersive show featured multiple rooms containing music, large-scale neons, sculpture, and video, each representing a different iconic African American figure. A room dedicated to “the Godfather of house music” is now part of the AGO Collection and is currently on view in the exhibition Bright Signs: Spotlight on Video Art.

Progress Palace memorializes legendary Chicago DJ Frankie Knuckles (1955 – 2014). In the late 1970s, Knuckles became the first resident DJ of the large Chicago nightclub The Warehouse. A hub for Black and Latino queer communities, the site became synonymous with a new style of electronic music that fused together R&B and disco, later known as house (namesake of The Warehouse). In this installation, Gates brings together five works in a symbolic re-creation of The Warehouse, paying homage to its enduring legacy and the memory of its legendary DJ.

Installation view, Bright Signs: Spotlight on Video Art, July 3 - October 14, 2024. Art Gallery of Ontario. Work shown: Theaster Gates. Houseberg, from Progress Palace, 2016. © Theaster Gates. Photo © AGO.

Upon entering the room, visitors will step into a dynamic audio and visual experience. Blue and magenta light fills the space, emitting from a massive two-channel video projected onto the northeast corner. This immersive glow provides the perfect backdrop for the spinning disco ball effect of Gates’s Houseberg, a rotating iceberg-like sculptural piece, that reflects white light throughout the installation. Positioned roughly 15 feet away also on the floor is Ghost DJ Booth. This empty steel frame DJ Booth directly suggests Knuckle’s ancestral presence in the room. Mounted on the wall just outside the room is Baby Neon, Gates’s striking, spiral-shaped neon interpretation of one of scholar W.E.B. Dubois’ graphical representations of data on African American progress.

The two-channel video, House Heads Liberation, is the main focal point of Progress Palace. It features vocalist and musician Yaw Agyeman under glowing blue and magenta flood lights, repeatedly singing the phrase “there is a house”, over a hybrid soundscape that blends a slow drumbeat, excerpts from Malcolm X speeches, and parts of the South Shore Commission’s song Free Man. Amid cutaway shots of spinning club lights, we see a group of people participating in a dance lesson led by an instructor. Their movements, inspired by house dance styles, are slowed down to emphasize the sacred and emancipatory power of music and dance.

Installation view, Bright Signs: Spotlight on Video Art, July 3 - October 14, 2024. Art Gallery of Ontario. Work shown: Theaster Gates, Brown Doors, 2016. © Theaster Gates. Photo © AGO.

Gates places large wooden doors at the entryways to Progress Palace, both salvaged from since demolished buildings in Chicago. Through the work of his foundation, Rebuild, Gates has acquired and rescued multiple dilapidated sites in Chicago’s predominantly-Black and disinvested communities, reimagining and converting them as galleries, archives and artist residencies. In 2021, Gates and Rebuild Foundation redeemed the vacant Stony Island Savings Bank, formerly at risk for demolition, into a 17,000-square-foot space dedicated to innovation in Black contemporary art and archival practice. Among other projects, Rebuild also launched the Dorchester Art and Housing Collaborative, a 32-unit affordable housing co-op for Black artists and artist families in Chicago; Kenwood Gardens, a landscaped greenspace reclaimed from 13 formerly vacant city lots; the 6-Flat, a residential building that provides studio and living space for artists-in-residence at Rebuild; and is completing the renovation of the 40,000 sq ft site of the former St. Laurence Elementary School.

Installation view, Bright Signs: Spotlight on Video Art, July 3 - October 14, 2024. Art Gallery of Ontario. Works shown: Theaster Gates, House Heads Liberation Training, and Houseberg from Progress Palace, 2016 © Theaster Gates. Photo © AGO.

Progress Palace is on view now through October 14 at the AGO as part of Bright Signs: Spotlight on Video Art. Curated by Debbie Johnsen, AGO, Manager, Modern and Contemporary Collections, this exhibition features artworks that will form the cornerstone for the expansion of the new Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery, starting construction in 2024.