Curated by Stems Gallery and Arsenal Contemporary Art New York

Stems Gallery and Arsenal Contemporary Art New York have joined forces across the Atlantic to present an exciting group exhibition that includes 12 artists working across various materials and techniques spanning painting, photography, and sculpture. The exhibition brings the worlds of art, fashion, and sport under the microscope to explore the connections between them and offer an understanding of their unique significance within contemporary visual culture.

In philosophy and sociology, a lot has already been already said about the parallels between art and sport – but the dialog has yet to integrate fashion. These three disciplines have gained an increasingly vast influence over social and economic modes of cultural production. Each of the artists presented in the show have brought to the fore the emotional and physical dynamics at play through the reference of rituals within highly commodified practices. The worlds of sports, art, and fashion are especially meaning for young people; they offer up symbols, stylistic choices, personality traits and behaviors that are instrumental in establishing communities, portraying political affiliation, and used as tools to affirm one’s identity. These labels and markers don’t simply disappear after high school – they continue to shape our psyche, offering promises of opportunity, belonging, hope, and escape.

In pieces such as The Color of Power and Power in Numbers, Hank Willis Thomas confronts conceptions about the intersection of power, race, and gender. These ideas are also echoed in the works P.B. EMIRDAG and Modèle (portrait de deux frères) by Clément Poplineau. Mixed media sculptures by Julien Boudet, Brian Jungen, and Tyrell Winston upcycle various objects, sneakers, motorbikes, and basketballs, to contemplate the colors, texture, logos, and emblems that effectively turn commodities into objects of desire. Paintings by Tonia Nneji and Evgen Čopi Gorišek pay close attention to the elaborate patterns, materials, and fabrics that adorn our bodies, furniture, and walls.

Together, the works offer a deeper realization: the most mundane daily rituals – the basketball games or trips to the shopping mall – become our most adequate means of observing the passage of time.