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Robert Indiana The MECCA Floor, 1977
‘Considered the largest pop art painting ever, The MECCA (Milwaukee Exposition Convention Center & Arena) floor is an iconic piece of Milwaukee sports history. Painted by artist, Robert Indiana, the floor featured bold primary colors and geometric designs. Both the Milwaukee Bucks and Marquette University played on the iconic floor before it was retired in 1997.’
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Scott Redford Introducing Reinhardt Dammn, 2010
‘In June 2010, the Sydney gallery Breenspace opened Scott Redford: Introducing Reinhardt Dammn, a solo exhibition by Scott Redford. As dramatic as the works were, the objects in the show were not quite as surprising—or significant—as the conceit that Redford wrapped around them. Redford explained that viewers were to approach the show not as his work, but as the work of fictional artist Reinhardt Dammn. Redford described Dammn as: ‘a twenty-two-year-old who surfs, makes art, and sings in a band. Reinhardt is cocky and always the showman, but his bravado masks vulnerability. Spurned by the official art world because of his youth, Reinhardt is also rejected because he refuses to ignore the obvious: a canvas painted one colour is not a “monochrome signalling art’s autonomy”, it is a one-colour canvas; a soup tin is a soup tin; an installation is just objects placed in a room. Daring to speak with the innocence of a wild child, Reinhardt challenges the complacency of art’s powers-that-be.’ The Dammn story sounds familiar. Dammn may be a critic of the establishment, but he already has the aura of an art star, awaiting his own glossy-magazine personality profile. His very name suggests a Faustian pact with the devil.
‘Dammn was not only Redford’s invention; he was also his own invention. As Redford has explained: ‘Reinhardt Dammn is not his real name. He changed it by deed poll when he turned eighteen. His name is part-Dickens, part-punk. He renamed himself in the manner of Sid Vicious, Johnny Rotten and Billy Idol, conflating the name of American painter Ad Reinhardt and the word “damn”.’3 For Redford, it was all about a movie he wanted to make: ‘I’m working on the proposed film of Reinhardt’s life as a scriptwriter and set designer, maybe also as co-director if it comes off … I make new art works for him, often based on styles of my work from the 1980s.’
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Greg Barth Trajectories 2, 2015
‘Using my trajectories technique that consists of freezing a series of actions in time physically before animating each object sequentially through projection mapping, opposing players dialogue through a series of racket exchanges that intensifies to the point of no return.’
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Laura Millard Power Play, 2019
video
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Shaun Gladwell Skateboarders vs. Minimalism, 2016
‘The skateboarders Jesus Esteban, Hillary Thompson and Rodney Mullen come up against the likes of Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Tony Smith and Ellsworth Kelly. The project looked at the dynamic between artists and skateboarders, and particularly the forms in which skateboarders use. Often the work from the late 60s within the school of minimalism has a striking resemblance to objects that are used for skateboarding in skateparks. The skatepark objects are usually generic, simplified and abbreviated forms within the urban landscape, so the skateboarders would be very well trained even before getting into the project, in which they skateboard on replica minimalist artworks.’
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Alison Saar Bat Boyz, 2001
baseball bats and pitch
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Nelson Leirner Maracana, 2003
Plaster, plastic, ceramic, wood
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Richard Fauguet Untitled, 2000-2005
‘The work is a history, because it tells the story of just a few strokes of imaginary table tennis, of which you have so little consciousness that you’re more consumed with the rules or the thought of who’s winning. But here, the phenomenology of the tock-tick ti-ti-ti is grotesquely monumentalised, leaving no room in the space for any other moment.’
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Elmgreen & Dragset Short Story, 2021
‘Elmgreen & Dragset’s Short Story is like a film-still that captures a charged moment after a tennis match – but it is up to the audience to complete the abrupt narratives frozen before them in time and space. In Short Story we are left looking for answers or explanations. Three characters stand before you, but subtle and contextualizing narratives remain elusive. Instead, we enter a space that invites reflection on topics such as competition, individualism, inclusion and exclusion.’
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Eddie Peake Touch, 2012
‘Eddie Peake first turned heads staging a naked five-a-side football match in Burlington Gardens back in 2012, while still a postgraduate student at London’s Royal Academy of Arts. It had “a brash energy, a wit and beautiful absurdity” and was “discussed at length across all departments”, according to Peake’s Senior Tutor Brian Griffiths. Peake’s work is an often-energetic spectacle in which the absurd and the erotic each find a place, and in which the artist plays a central role.’
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Herbie Fletcher Wrecktangles, 2013
‘Herbie Fletcher began surfing in Huntington Beach when he was just 10, but later moved to Hawaii and became a professional surfer and the owner of several surf and snowboard lines. Also an artist, Fletcher shapes and paints boards to create fine art. His latest project, Wrecktangles, is an installation made up of broken and recycled surfboards. To create the dynamic artpieces, Fletcher sourced ravaged boards from surfers on Oahu and shipped them to NYC. Fletcher pieced together the boards into tangled wall sculptures that are a juxtaposition of sponsor logos, traction pads, custom-made shapes and the personal expressions of each surfer.’
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Harun Farocki Deep Play, 2007
‘Harun Farocki’s work Deep Play is made up of various perspectives on the final of the 2006 World Cup. We see the ‘clean feed’, the television networks’ raw material. We see individual players on both teams, but also abstract computer-generated representations of the flow of play. The intelligent network of relationships among players who are kicking, passing, receiving the ball and running – a network that absorbs spontaneous individual decisions as well as tactical ideas and habits rooted in the culture of the game – is endlessly complex given the size of the field. This roughly corresponds to the range of possible constellations offered by a group of guppies in a mid-sized aquarium. This may be sublime, but it also makes us sad. However the game is not only classified, assessed and transferred to other systems, for example by trusted experts who analyse and evaluate all quantifiable events. We also experience the majestic calm of a summer’s day as it draws to a close above the Olympic Stadium. We hear many soundtracks, from the police radio to the words of TV production teams from all over the world, alternating between commanding, consequential speech and contemplative reflections on events. Above all, what we experience is how the laboratory of football is able to exhibit the most advanced technology in the production and presentation of moving images. All fans and followers of simulation and documentation, movies, TV and computer games start running a little warmer as they watch. We see how eerily close the wishes of the consumers, the trainers and the police really are to each other. Just as they are in real life.’
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Ana Soler Causa-Efecto, 2012
‘Spanish artist Ana Soler, in her most recent work entitled Causa-Efecto (Cause & Effect), hung 2,000 tennis balls across the Mustang Art Gallery in Alicante, Spain. The balls are carefully aligned in suspended trajectories that appear to bounce off walls, floors, and other surfaces providing an uncanny sense of motion similar to a photograph taken with a strobe light.’
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Paul Pfeiffer Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 2001
‘Basketball heroes are erased from their courts in the digital film Three Studies of Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion. In his photographs and video installations, which often have religious titles, Pfeiffer utilizes new technology to destabilize the experience of viewing, whether through the erasure of the central athlete in sports spectacles or by splicing scenes so as to trap figures in endless repetition.’
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Sylvie Blocher Are you a Masterpiece?, 1999
‘ARE YOU A MASTERPIECE? was filmed with the Tigers football team at Princeton. I had managed to be in touch with the team manager with the help of Barbara London at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. My questions were about art, beauty, the sublime, proportions, taste, gods, power and money. The players selected by the manager went in front of the camera wearing their helmets and team uniforms. It was summer and it was terribly hot in the basement of the stadium, and the players sweated profusely in front of the spots, but they never budged. They were like so many brave soldiers, because the president had asked them to do this to become artworks. After each session, I had to help them take off those tight plastic guards they wore on their torsos under their close- fitting T-shirts. It was a weird thing to do. They nearly all talked about the pain when they had to take the guards off, after their matches, when their bodies were bruised all over.’
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Xu Zhen The path to appearance is always accessible and traveled but one can go around it, 2010
baseball bat and golf ball
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Marco Fusinato Constellations, 2015
‘A 40-metre wall with a 1.5‑metre gap at each end is built to bisect the gallery. Hidden inside the wall are a series of microphones connected to a PA system. The entrance side of the gallery is empty. On the other side of the gallery, coming out from the bisecting wall a baseball bat is attached to a steel chain. The audience is invited to strike the wall. Their action is amplified at 120db.’
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Duane Hanson Surfer, 1987
‘The work takes as its subject a boy, dressed in his sunset-colored swimming trunks as he holds his fiery board in one hand, the other nonchalantly on his hip. He gazes out into the distance, avoiding the eye of the viewer, searching for the perfect wave. Created during a time of worldwide obsession with sportswear, body image and exercise trends, Surfer, 1987, vividly highlights the artist’s captivation with consumer culture while also holding personal significance as the sculpture was modeled after Hanson’s son.’
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Links Invitational: 9 holes of playable art golf, 2010
‘As an artist, I always resent these stupid theme shows. Only one step removed from those plastic cows that “artists” decorate for charity, or the inane competitions on workof FAart on TV. Mini Golf, in particular, is a recurring curatorial copout. At least when the artists make centerpieces for the benefit auction, you get a few free hors deouvres. What do you get at a mini golf show- A Bucket of Balls? Why is it only visual artists get subjected to these idiotic themes, these “fun ideas”? How come famous poets arent asked to all write poems about Cupcakes for an anthology? Everybody likes Cupcakes, right? Choreographers arent all asked to reinterpret the drive thru window experience at McDonalds. Composers arent told that they must write a piece about Snowboarding. Good art does not come at the request of a curator to fit into a “fun” category that everyone can relate to. Sure, once in a while some of these show produce interesting, or at least amusing, shadows of what the artist could really do if left unmolested. But by and large, they are an example of intellectual lazyness on the part of exhibiting spaces and curators, and pandering to the lowest common denominator.’
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Marcin Maciejowski Misiek (FC Wisła Kraków supporter), 2004
‘Misiek (FC Wisła Kraków supporter) appears to memorialize an infamous hooligan who threw a knife at Italian footballer Dino Baggio during a championship match. Misiek (nickname for Pawel Michalski) was sent to prison for that and other offenses. Maciejowski’s painting is a record of, a comment on how Misiek is revered by fans.’
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Pelle Cass Various, 2019
‘The anarchic jumble of athletes in motion in the sports photography of Pelle Cass is real. It is not staged. But it isn’t the same reality we see when we’re watching a game, a competition, or a meet. That’s because in Cass’ pictures, everything is happening at the same time, in the same place. In the staged photographs of artists like Gregory Crewdson or Alex Prager, people are marshaled like movie extras into compositions that are like a single film frame—a special, fortuitous frame that perfectly represents a film that does not exist. In Cass’ photos, all the frames are on top of each other, all at once. Everything exists. All the events that could possibly happen in one scene are happening simultaneously, out of order. No singular moment presides. Instead, there is a spray of out-of-sequence instants, detached from a linear timeline.’
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Olaf Nicolai Big Sneaker [The Nineties], 2001
‘Olaf Nicolai’s inflatable sculpture Big Sneaker [The Nineties] is a proportionally exact enlargement of Nike’s ‘Air Max.’ It can be displayed either standing, or lying on its side. In the horizontal variation, a seating facility is offered in the form of an oversized sofa on which the visitor can sit down. Ironically monumental, in spite of its size, the sculpture is so light that it can easily be moved across the floor.’
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Lí Wei Once upon a time, 2020
‘An installation of six meticulously detailed life-size mannequins of 7-year-olds created by the artist. They sit in toy cars equipped with temperature sensors, which allow them to navigate around obstacles. At first, the drivers were cautious, observing the other mannequins at a distance. But very soon, wariness turned into chasing, teasing, battling and confrontation.’
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John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres Carlos BBall, 2016
‘John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres first met at the Fashion Moda alternative space in the Bronx in 1979, where Ahearn was doing live castings of people in front of the storefront window, and hanging the painted portraits as an exhibit. Torres, then 18, had a keen understanding of what Ahearn was doing, having grown up working in his uncle’s religious statuary factory.’
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Stephen Dean VOLTA, 2018
‘VOLTA turns away from the soccer game to show only its raucous spectators. A composite of nearly a dozen Brazilian championship matches, it captures rhythms of disappointment and euphoria at a massive scale. Smoke bombs explode, banners roll across thousands of spectators, chants erupt: out of this chaos people are revealed as pixels of skin color forming a fanatic choreography.’
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Louka Anargyros Leather Boys, 2018
‘Leatherboys are ceramic sculptures, depicting what seems like male bodies entangled in close embraces. All are dressed in motorbike racing outfits, helmets, gloves, and boots. The char- acteristic sponsor logos on the sports outfits have been replaced by an array of homophobic and derogatory insults that were hurtled at the artist himself and that he collected.’
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Wim Delvoye Mid Size Ace 1250 , 1989
stained glass window, lead and tennis racket
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Yong Ping Huang A football match of June 14th, 2002 , 2002
‘A host of stuffed bats hanging from a huge fibreglass block overlook a football field more than four metres long. Like a suspended asteroid, it poses a cataclysmic threat. As viewers approach the field, they notice that the opposing teams are made up of figurines of veiled women and American soldiers.’
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Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen Golf/Typhoon, 1996
Acrylic urethane enamel on bronze and aluminum
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Lutz Bacher What Are You Thinking, 2011
‘Bay Area artist Lutz Bacher was given the entire 4th floor at the 2012 Whitney Biennial. She released hundreds of beautifully beat-up baseballs and let them lie where they landed on the stone floor. It means baseballs on a floor.’
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Catherine Opie High School Football, 2007 – 2009
‘In “High School Football”, Opie bears witness to a community in transition, recognizing the vulnerability of the players at this moment between youth and adulthood. A stylized, masculine armature overlays the young players’ fragility, showing them as both warrior-like and boyish; they embody and elude the cliché of the fierce athlete. Likewise in the landscape photographs, as the locales in the distance vary from Hawaii’s mountains to Ohio’s parking lots, the rigid geometry of the fields creates a universal iconography particular to this American sport.’
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Dana Hoey Ladies Muay Thai Fight Night, 2019
‘As part of her exhibition Dana Hoey Presents, artist Dana Hoey organized a live Ladies Muay Thai Fight Night featuring 5 amateur fights, emceed by JoAnn Falanga, which took place on Friday night in the 20’ x 20’ boxing ring installed inside Petzel Gallery. Dana Hoey Presents challenges and confronts preconceived ideas and realities of feminism, combat, violence, self defense and the martial arts.’
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Gabriel Orozco The Long Ball, 1993
steel, paint
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Raymond Pettibon Untitled, 1994
drawing
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Tyrrell Winston Skewers, 2020
‘The Skewers works are assemblages featuring linearly placed discarded basketballs, linked in predetermined compositions. Winston collects the basketballs and preserves the disfigured shapes in which he finds them. Once gathered together, the morphed spherical shapes take on a choral nature, collaboratively bringing forth stories of their past—embedded histories that have since become abstracted.’
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Joel Westendorf Various (Untitled), 2015 – 2018
photographs
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Robert Longo Study for Race Car Crash, 2012
ink and charcoal on vellum
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Shaun Gladwell Interceptor Surf Sequence, 2009
‘The stereo projection of Interceptor Surf Sequence shows two identical cars travelling down a dusty outback road; one under sunny skies, the other towards a lowering mass of dark thunderclouds. A helmeted figure slowly emerges from each moving car, like a cicada sliding out of its shell. Shot in extreme slow motion, the figure climbs gracefully and purposefully to the top of the car, to stand still yet move through space – like a surfer riding a board. This solitary figure contemplates a vast and barren landscape, split by a corrugated road, that could be in any arid subcontinent – Africa or India. But the presence of the muscle car and helmeted rider mark this environment as Australian – as ‘the Outback’ mythologised in films like Walkabout (1971), Wake in Fright (1971) Mad Max (1979) and Razorback (1984).’
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Jake & Dinos Chapman Chess set, 2003
32 bronze chess figures, painted, with glass, hair and fur on lead crystal plinths. Board and box made of ebony and rosewood with inlaid skull veneer
*
p.s. Hey. ** Brandon, Hi, Brandon. Big congrats on the successful tattoo acquisition. I vaguely remember some movie where the main character always had a couple of dice in his hand to play with so he wouldn’t punch other people in the face or something, so maybe the would work with the urge to itch? The Strickland is on my agenda. Thanks for the fair warning. Working at a bookstore! Noble profession. Is a store in Glendale? Is it an interesting store? Fingers strangling crossed that that they offer you the gig. I’m good enough, thanks, busy with stuff. It’s still not too hot out. Have a freakazoid weekend, pal. ** David Ehrenstein, Ha ha, that one was a bit of a stretch, David. ** Misanthrope, I’m trying to think of a situation where lighter and quicker wouldn’t be a good approach, and I can’t. The Jurassic movie followed by a bonfire: the USA at its best. Rigby’s going to NZ? That’s a hell of a trip. I guess he doesn’t know Josiah. He’s the only person I know there that I know of. Happy pre-4th! ** _Black_Acrylic, Excellent, dude! A mere few weeks even. I look forward to a jpeg-based tour of your new pad once you’ve marked the turf. ** ANGAYRAZE (FART), Hey. Farting, or rather being farted on, is a very popular fetish among the slaves guys right now, I have no clue as to why. ‘The himbo muscle jock worm is wriggling into my brain’: Be careful, dude. Oh, wait am I saying. There are worse worms. But then again, what does ‘worse’ even mean. Anyway, blah blah, congrats on being so gay and so old school porn movie scene-like. Link worked. You are getting buff. Be careful, dude. Ha ha, just kidding. Hunks rule the world. They do, think about it. ** Billy, Hi, Billy. Seriously awesome that you too like ‘Malady of Death’ so much. Excellent description/comparison. I know the name Elizabeth Jane Howard, but I haven’t read her. I actually have kind of a big thing or fondness for sneaky genteel prose as practiced by UK female authors — Compton-Burnett, Quin, Spark, etc. So I’m game. Wow, theoretically, Fran Leibowitz should be blast. I can’t really imagine her getting stuck on one topic for that long. And she always tries to be a little off key, so, at the very least, she surely won’t state the obvious at length. Have big fun. ** Okay. To the best of my memory I have never devoted a blog post to sports before, but this weekend all of that changes. Sort of. See you on Monday.
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