The schematic abstractions, Court(ed), puzzle the fraught relationship between the business of professional sports and the sites from which players are drawn. The surround of school courts by emblematic NBA court patterns mimic the magnetism exercised by professional sports in neighborhoods otherwise short on investment that have become gardens for harvesting talent. With this series I am interested formally, in the use of abstraction decipherable as a type of social codex.
In Ballpark Figures, newspaper sports coverage is the source for compositions based on contours of athletes ‘in play.’ Considering the quasi-religious fervor of fans, the player’s gestures are ironically reminiscent of High Renaissance, mannerist figures. Filling their forms with lush paisley abstractions resonates for me with the peculiar reality of players who are reduced to a number yet simultaneously elevated by the fetishism of their fans. Additionally, paisley, a common fabric pattern with a deep and complex past, serves as a metaphor for erased history and the emptying out of significance when a figure or form is commodified through its manufacture. Problematic aspects of the commercialization of sports slip away in its overwhelming spectacle.
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