Theaster Gates: Oh, You’ve Got to Come Back to the City
Taking inspiration from a song by Marvin Tate, Gates personifies the city of Chicago through a grid of stone sculptures, tar paintings and performance activations
In Oh, You’ve Got to Come Back to the City, Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates (born 1973) brings together a new series of tar paintings, sculptures and installations to tell an allegory of the city in decay and the potential contained within its ruins. The exhibition’s title comes from a song by Chicago musician and poet Marvin Tate, in which the city, personified as a character, has cleaned up its act and attempts to lure its residents back from the suburbs. In this body of work, Gates wrestles with the burden brought on by aging infrastructure to create new narratives that build on the rich metaphors embedded in his materials—as tools of resistance, signs of excess and evidence of decline.
STATUS: Forthcoming | 7/28/2026
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Theaster Gates: Oh, You’ve Got to Come Back to the City
Published by GRAY.
Taking inspiration from a song by Marvin Tate, Gates personifies the city of Chicago through a grid of stone sculptures, tar paintings and performance activations
In Oh, You’ve Got to Come Back to the City, Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates (born 1973) brings together a new series of tar paintings, sculptures and installations to tell an allegory of the city in decay and the potential contained within its ruins. The exhibition’s title comes from a song by Chicago musician and poet Marvin Tate, in which the city, personified as a character, has cleaned up its act and attempts to lure its residents back from the suburbs. In this body of work, Gates wrestles with the burden brought on by aging infrastructure to create new narratives that build on the rich metaphors embedded in his materials—as tools of resistance, signs of excess and evidence of decline.
