Theaster Gates at Prada Home, Milan

During Milan Design Week, Prada Home has unveiled its first retail space in Milan with ‘Chawan Cabinet’, an exhibition by Theaster Gates. Curated by Gates in close collaboration with Prada, the presentation brings together works by the artist alongside those of Japanese potters central to his evolution as a maker: Yuichi Hirano, Shion Tabata, Taira Kuroki and Koichi Ohara.

The exhibition includes Gates’s editioned works, large-scale ceramic sculptures and a body of clay tiles from Tokoname, previously integrated into installations at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; the Albuquerque Foundation, Sintra; and this year’s Shanghai Biennial. These works are shown in dialogue with objects from Prada’s homeware line.

Gates said: ‘This project has the ability to totally transform where the center of my artistic practice lives. In a moment when my investment in the conceptual has to meet the truth of the complexities of the streets, I come back to the hand, the table, friendship and simple human kindness. Pots are about people. I want to focus on that’.