Dave: All My Relations

Gagosian is pleased to present Dave: All My Relations, an exhibition organized by Theaster Gates that celebrates David Drake (c. 1801–1874), an enslaved ceramicist from Edgefield, South Carolina, known as Dave the Potter. The exhibition traces Dave's impact on Gates's own practice and serves to commemorate the gift of a historic work by Dave from Gates's personal collection to the artist's descendants. That vessel will be shown together with another recently returned to Dave's family and alongside two new works by Gates. Dave: All My Relations opens on March 26 at Gagosian's Park & 75 location in New York. Now recognized as a significant figure in the history of American ceramics, Dave was a skilled potter who made some of the finest examples of the alkali-glazed stoneware for which the Edgefield area is known. Yet, beyond his mastery of craft and scale, Dave left a mark that set him apart for its daring and beauty: he not only signed his work; in some cases, he incised them with verse. This act was illegal in the antebellum South, where laws prohibited enslaved individuals from being taught to read or write. Gates first encountered Dave's work in 2008 while studying ceramics under Ingrid Lilligren. Having explored the work of many of the pioneers in the field, he asked her about the great historical Black ceramicists, and she directed him to an obscure catalogue for a 1998 exhibition presented at the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina in Columbia: I made this jar . . . : The Life and Works of the Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave. This revelation would strike a chord within Gates, and its reverberations continue through his practice today.