It’s a common saying when it comes to acknowledging our ancestors that “we stand on the shoulders of giants,” but in Theaster Gates’s “Dave: All My Relations,” the artist asks a more difficult question: What does it mean to pay our ancestors back?
At the Gagosian art gallery on the Upper East Side, Gates offers an answer that is as physical as it is philosophical. In one of the exhibition’s most striking gestures, Gates breaks and destroys his own ceramic works, folding the fragments into concrete to construct a throne for Dave the Potter. It is an act that resists the easy language of homage. Instead of simply honoring the past, Gates relinquishes part of himself to elevate it. What emerges is repayment instead of a simple tribute. That distinction matters.
For generations, the work of David Drake, or Dave the Potter, an enslaved, literate, and defiantly expressive sculptor, has been admired without fully reckoning with the conditions under which it was made. His jars, often inscribed with poetry, were acts of quiet rebellion in a time when literacy itself was forbidden. To create, to write, to leave a mark was to assert a kind of personhood that the institution of slavery sought to erase. That tension still lingers in the afterlife of his work as questions of ownership and legacy continue to follow his name. In this exhibit, Gates steers his ship into the storm.
Malcolm Johnson photos
Quilt depicts 12 separate feminine figures with wide range of expressions. 
Quilt called “Made Right” features deep colors and patterns. 
Many untitled works in this exhibition feature Black and Brown people playing instruments. 
Several works by Arjan Martins hang in Olney Gleason gallery. 
Work by Erin Leann Mitchell depicting a home hangs in Curtiss Jacobs gallery. 
Untitled work by Arjan Martins shows a girl playing piano near the beach. 
Five female figures take step forward together. 
Four pieces by Theaster Gates and Dave the Potter attract attention at Gagosian. 
Vase created by Dave the Potter on top of base created from destroyed and repurposed work from Theaster Gates. 
Another untitled work from Arjan Martins shows band of dark figures.
Throughout the exhibition, the conversation between past and present feels less like influence and more like continuation. In newly produced works, Gates draws from Drake’s material language: alkaline glazing native to South Carolina, monumental form, integration of text. Each instance of alchemy is an extension of Drake’s work, not an imitation. Where Drake once inscribed under constraint, Gates responds with freedom, but never without acknowledgment of the cost that made that freedom possible.
There is a sense of collision, an almost atomic convergence of centuries. The past is not distant here; it presses forward, reshaping the present as much as it is being reinterpreted by it. The deep, earthen tones that define the exhibition adorn, protect, and — in some ways — anchor the work to a lineage that refuses to be abstracted. Gates transforms the gallery into a site of exchange, where influence flows in both directions, and where the act of looking becomes part of a larger reckoning.
If we have long understood ourselves as standing on the shoulders of giants, “Dave: All My Relations” suggests that posture is incomplete. To stand is one thing. To build, to restore, to return is something else entirely. In that space between inheritance and responsibility, Gates makes his most powerful claim: The past is not just something to honor. It is something we owe.
“Dave: All My Relations” runs through May 2. For more information, visit gagosian.com.
At the Olney Gleason gallery, Arjan Martins’s first U.S. solo exhibition, “40° 39′ 40″ N, 73° 56′ 38″ W,” is a reminder that time and distance are not powerful enough to sever the shared pride, struggle, and creativity born of the African diaspora. A native of Rio de Janeiro, Martins leans into a visual language that requires no translation, telling stories shaped by explosive imagination and layered complexity.
Rather than relying on facial expression, Martins allows the depth of his figures’ dark skin, slick and luminous like obsidian, to carry emotional weight against the raw intensity of the colors that surround them. Identity, or the deliberate obscuring of it, becomes part of the narrative. Faces are often shrouded, withholding easy interpretation, while music threads through nearly every piece. We see the notes being played, but never hear them.
That silence is intentional. It places the viewer in a space of questioning and longing, forcing an acknowledgment of the beauty in front of us while reminding us that every story extends far beyond what is visible. That tension between what is shown and what is withheld mirrors the experience of the African diaspora itself. What we see is magnificent, but it is only a fraction of the depth, history, and power that lives beneath the surface.
At Olney Gleason, Martins constructs a connective thread — one that stretches across oceans and generations, binding fragmented histories into something whole, even if only for a moment. The exhibit runs through May 2. For more info, visit olneygleason.com.
The colors of spring adorn the walls of the Curtiss Jacobs Gallery, but they aren’t painted, they’re stitched. In “Hittin a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick,” Erin Leann Mitchell weaves centuries of expression, feminism, freedom, and Black joy into quilts that feel as alive as they are intentional. Each piece is more than a vibrant composition of pattern and color. It’s a roadmap, guiding the viewer back to something deeper, something familiar: home.
“Quilting itself has a sense of home for me,” Mitchell said. “I have memories attached to quilts my grandmother made — things that kept us warm, that were there to sit on, to live with.”
That sense of home extends far beyond the domestic. Each quilt reflects the fullness of the Black experience; how we move, how we gather, how we protect ourselves, how we love. Drawing inspiration from her Birmingham, Alabama, roots and the legacy of the Great Migration, Mitchell’s work echoes generations of Black families who traveled north in search of freedom and opportunity. That history feels especially present in Harlem, where the exhibition is housed.
“We’re always migrating and trying to find the place where we can meet some level of happiness,” Mitchell said. “There’s always a thing of moving, migrating, and making another home — or finding space for that homelessness.”
Mitchell constructs her quilts from a mix of hand-made fabrics and materials gathered from loved ones and her travels. That range of origins gives each piece a layered identity, where every swatch of cotton carries its own history. For Mitchell, the material itself is memory.
“Fabric holds a story … something about it always strikes the person looking at it,” she said. “It takes them to a place, a time, a person. Memory is also a space of home — when the walls don’t exist anymore.”
That memory work is at the heart of the exhibition. What Mitchell creates is emotional, ancestral, and deeply personal as well as visual. The connected fabric reflects the way we are all connected to each other.
“What existed then still exists now,” Mitchell said. “We’re still navigating, still making something out of nothing.”
For more info, visit curtissjacobs.gallery.