CAM Raleigh’s Above the Rim exhibition, on view from October 5, 2018-February 3, 2019, explores basketball through the lens of art and celebrates the energy, poetry, community, and excitement of the game. The exhibition brings together sixteen internationally renowned artists using various media.
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Bryce Lankard
Born and raised in North Carolina, photographer Bryce Lankard has spent years capturing the spirit and energy of the state. An alumnus of UNC, he now teaches photography at Duke University. Lankard photographed the basketball games of UNC for decades, capturing future stars including Michael Jordan. In this way, he has created a huge wealth of historical and irreplaceable images.
David Leggett
(b. 1980) The bright and bold work of Los Angeles based artist David Leggett interrogates race and identity politics. Using a variety of media including collage, illustration, and painting his work is both humorous and arresting, fostering a self-reflexive discussion with the viewer. For Leggett, the humor present in the work allows for a heightened level of discourse that is able to probe deeply into current social and political issues. Basketball and sports imagery are common themes among his work, using its nostalgia and associated meanings to form new interpretations.
Devin Troy Strother
(b. 1986) Based in Los Angeles, Devin Troy Strother works across many mediums including painting, installation, and sculpture. He often incorporates pop culture in his work to spark discussions about elitism and the roles of race and class in the art world. Creating a dialogue between the iconography of nostalgia and the artistic practices of notable artists, his work often explores identity formation using basketball culture and imagery. Many of his works are intrinsically situated with their lengthy and provocative titles, which he describes as the “punchline” to his paintings.
Dorian Lynde
Using a variety of mediums including painting and sculptural installation, the work of Toronto born and Los Angeles based artist Dorian Lynde investigates issues surrounding the commodification of femininity and identity formation. Confronting a patriarchal system, her work involves the manipulation of pop-culture and mass-marketing imagery, specifically targeting its gendered nature and exposing its inherent misogyny. Her work Ice Blue Blast Posters #1-5 explores the gendered nature of sports drink marketing and the ways that this extends into the marginalization of women in sports, particularly in basketball.
Eren Cannata
Growing up on tour with his dad, alongside the Beach Boys and Billy Joel, Eren Cannata has always been surrounded by sound. Now a professional musician, he has gained wide commercial success, winning an Emmy for his work on Frankie Cooks: Season 3 in which he created the opening titles for the show using the sounds generated by found kitchen utensils. Using a similar technique, Cannata has created an immersive sound installation in the museum using the natural elements of a basketball game.
Eric Yahnker
(b. 1976) Oriented around altered versions of pop culture, Eric Yahnker’s work is bold and surreal. Intensely politically charged, his work often combines conflicting media imagery and iconography, forming new meanings from their relationships. Basketball and sports culture are common motifs within his work which he often merges with art historical references to comment on social issues in a satirical way.
Estevan Oriol
(b. 1966) The streets are the studio for photographer Estevan Oriol who has spent the last few decades capturing different facets of street culture from gangs to basketball. Deeply embedded in Los Angeles culture, his work is reflective of an extremely authentic experience of the city not typically represented in museums and galleries. He has spent the last several years working on a series capturing the raw spirit of various community basketball leagues and courts across the US. This work celebrates an often overlooked and undocumented aspect of the real American street and community oriented basketball that he is able to capture because of his unique connection and relationships with his subjects.
Felipe Pantone
(b. 1986) Living and working in Valencia, Spain, the work of Felipe Pantone has been exhibited across Europe, America, Australia, and Asia. He works to fuse graffiti, typography, and abstract forms together using geometric shapes and bright patterns. He often works in public space and is deeply embedded in street culture. His work has grown increasingly versatile in the types of surfaces that he paints, including cars, bridges, and sports apparel; Pantone’s work seems to form to the space that it inhabits. Bright and complex, the graphic nature of his work seamlessly mimics the liner elements of the basketball court.
Freehand Profit
With a passion for Hip-Hop, graffiti, sneakers and art, Gary Lockwood aka Freehand Profit works and lives in Los Angeles. In 2005 he graduated from the Corcoran School of Art & Design with a BFA. In 2010, while searching for an alternative materials, Lockwood began deconstructing sneakers to create gas masks. The shoes he uses are often the same coveted shoes worn on the courts by basketball players and are repurposed, calling attention to the arbitrary nature of their luxury status and giving them new worth.
Hank Willis Thomas
(b. 1976) Bold and iconic, the work of Hank Willis Thomas engages with issues surrounding identity, commodity, media, and popular culture and the ways in which they engage with concepts of race in America. The work is deeply emotional and highly charged, deconstructing typical representations of racialized identities and subverting their use in media and advertising. Often exploring the imagery in sports marketing, he has been known to appropriate the copy and logos used in Nike advertisements to create new narratives that interrogate the objectification and subjugation present in the original images.
Hueman
(b. 1985) Allison Torneros, or Hueman, lives and works in Oakland, California as a mural artist and painter. She has worked with brands like Nike to create a portrait of Kobe Bryant, as well as with the US Women’s Olympic Basketball team designing their uniforms and a collaborative mural project. Her work is impressively large scale and beautifully detailed, magnifying a sense of strength and power. Her forms and use of color convey a distinct energy and imply a kinetic fluidity.
Kevin Bouton-Scott
Kori Newkirk
(b. 1970) In his mixed media sculptures Kori Newkirk examines a range of complex social, cultural, and historical issues. Based in Los Angeles, his work often incorporates aspects of his surroundings to form new narratives that investigate representation and identity. He uses basketball and its imagery in allegorical terms only, both as an investigation of the spherical shape that manifests frequently in his work, and for its sociological and political symbolism.
Monica Kim Garza
(b. 1988) Monica Kim Garza is an artist born in Alamogordo, Mexico. She later moved to San Francisco, California and received a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the California College of Arts. Her paintings depict nude women in an honest way, stripped of its ideological baggage. A reoccuring theme among her work has been the depiction of women playing basketball, using allegorical symbols to convey issues surrounding female empowerment and racial inequality.
Spok
(b. 1978) Spok Brillor is an artist based in Madrid, Spain. Merging street art with fine art, his fascinating hyper-realistic technique and large format paintings establish a strong dialogue with the viewer. The dynamic essence of movement that Spok captures through his works parallels the powerful energy displayed in basketball by shots taken. This beauty, detail, and motion in his work evokes the composition of basketball plays and the graphic nature of the court.
Stephen “ESPO” Powers
(b. 1968) Philadelphia born, New York City based artist, Stephen Powers began graffitiing the tag ESPO (Exterior Surface Painting Outreach) in 1984. With a strong history in graffiti and street art culture, his work has had a heavy presence in the American urban landscape for decades. His colorful murals and signs create a withstanding link between communities and their surroundings. Powers, having both created work in the streets and exhibited at museums around the world, mirrors the versatile nature of basketball that is able to exist both indoors and outdoors.
EXHIBITION OPENING 7-11 pm
October 4
DANCE PARTY WITH ARTISTS 5 pm
February 2
LAST DAY OF EXHIBITION, Extended Hours
February 3
FREE FIRST FRIDAYS 6-10 pm
October 5, November 2, December 7, January 4, February 1
FREE FAMILY SATURDAYS 12-4 pm
October 6, November 3, December 8, January 5, February 2
SENSORY SATURDAYS 10 am-12 pm
October 13, November 10, December 15, January 12
STUDIO 409 6-8 pm
October 15, November 19, December 17, January 21
ADVISORY BOARD
Andy May • Chris Corchiani • Charlie McNairy • David Reynolds • Dereck Whittenburg • Dreamville • Dwayne West • Gab Smith • Jacqueline Whittenburg • Jay Bilas • Jesma Reynolds • Michael English • Patrick Hobgood • Paul Hobgood • Pepe Caudillo • Phil Ford • Runyon Tyler • Smedes York • Stephanie Bowens • Terrence Burroughs • Tim Capps • Wade Harris • Wayne Dunn • Wendy Bilas
THANKS TO OUR ABOVE THE RIM PARTNERS
AV Metro • Temple Sloan Family Foundation • Holt Brothers • Cresa Global •Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina • Duke Energy • Aloft • York Properties • McDonald York Building Company • Dick’s Sporting Goods • Dreamville • Hanbury • Citrix • Happy + Hale • The Upper Deck Company • Raleigh Raw • RATIO • Available Light • Maynard Family Foundation • Triangle Thunder • WALTER • The Scout Guide • Think Tank Gallery + Jacob Patterson • YMCA of the Triangle • JD Lewis Multipurpose Center • Carolina Ballet • Raleigh Rockers • Kind Snacks • Spanglish Unlimited • Raleigh Firebirds • Wake County Public School System • Jesma and David Reynolds • Pan II Creative • David R. Reynolds Realty, LLC • CAM/now
The Betty Eichenberger Adams Society