Wide World of Sports

Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton is pleased to present “Wide World of Sports,” an exhibition which brings together artists using sport as a subject matter.

Sports is often called the great equalizer: bringing together people from diverse backgrounds as both players and spectators. While visual art can feel, for many, out of reach and inaccessible, through the potent act of bringing sports imagery into painting, sculpture, and installations, the artists in this exhibition open art to a broader audience. The exhibition itself becomes a metaphor for this reality: it freely intermixes the iconic historic work of Andy Warhol and LeRoy Neiman alongside significant voices in contemporary art including Hank Willis Thomas, Iván Navarro, and Robert Longo.

Competing as an athlete is not unlike having a studio practice: requiring dedication, stamina, and drive.  Wendy White, whose work is featured in the exhibition, has said: “I’m into the potential for either success or failure as a parallel between sports and art. Willpower is an incredible thing, and nothing to be taken lightly. The basic will to live, followed by the drive to do well at things, then to excel once momentum is created. I know it’s cliché, but it’s beautiful. Sports embody that, while also being emblematic of youth and desire.”

The show includes work invoking sports with a variety of approaches.  Several artists utilize sports equipment and paraphernalia, turning them into installation pieces or poetic commentary. These include abstract assemblages by Charles McGill, made of repurposed, vintage golf bags. David Hammons makes incisive, pointed alterations to basketball hoops and baseballs as commentary on visibility and invisibility in society. Nari Ward’s pieces, often incorporating found, discarded, and charred baseball bats, invoke a history of the violent oppression of African Americans. Guatemalan artist Darío Escobar uses hanging soccer balls to create surrealist forms of floating clouds. Tyrrell Winston’s work with found and discarded balls and nets suggests how history can be embedded in trash.