Sports Related Art

Matthew Barney. Cremaster 4, 1994. Digital-image production still. 35mm film.

Sports Related Art

Ready-Made

"Football players are simple folk. Whatever complexities, whatever dark politics of the human mind, the heart -- there are noted only within the chalked borders of the playing field. At times strange visions ripple across that turf; madness leaks out. But wherever else he goes, the football player travels the straightest of lines. His thoughts are wholesomely commonplace, his actions uncomplicated by history, enigma, holocaust or dream." -Don Delillo

Delillo, Don. End Zone. New York: Penguin Books, 1986. Print.

"...variously re-presented athletic imagery, revealing that the male athlete is a far more ambiguous, polyvalent figure in our collective cultural imagination than may be commonly recognized." - Judith Olch Richards

Bedford, Christopher. Mixed signals artists consider masculinity in sports. New York: Independent Curators International, 2009. Print.

This book deals with the ideas of masculinity in sports and the gender roles our society present to athletes of all ages and the pressures and stigmas that go along with their right of passage through the hierarchy of sports and peer issues. The book deals with a number of topics and artists ranging from the homophobic and violent nature of sports and their cultural studies and identity politics that follow these topics.
My studio work this semester seems to be taking me on an odd journey investigating what it is I really truly understand and am passionate about, sports and photography. I am experimenting with the ready made of sports equipment, which can mean almost an unlimited amount of objects for the taking. My ideas involves either an installation of suspended sports equipment or the dissection of equipment separated and pinned on the wall suggesting an anthropological study of said object(s). I will also be exploring the ideas of iconography and idolization of sports stars and possibly professional stadiums.