Los Carpinteros
Basquet Ball, 2008
Watercolor on paper
30 x 44 inches
Los Carpinteros have created some of the most important works to emerge from Latin America in the past decade. Spanish for "the Carpenters," their moniker underscores the importance of craft in their practice, aligning their studio in solidarity with
communal artisan guilds and skilled workers. The artists (Alexandre Arrechea, Marco Castillo, and Dagoberto Rodriguez) merge architecture, design, and sculpture in unexpected and often humorous ways. They draw their inspiration from the physical world,
particularly that of common urban structures. Their carefully crafted work sets up contradictions between object and function. After 20 years of collaboration, Arrechea left the group before this image was created.
Los Carpinteros' works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the TATE Gallery, London; the Museo
de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain among others. The artists live and work in Madrid, Spain and Havana, Cuba.
About Basquet Ball, 2008
Basquet Ball shows a basketball court with a backboard that arches like the trajectory of a bouncing ball. This piece is an early concept drawing for a large-scale sculpture that has since been constructed on the grounds of the Indianapolis
Museum of Art. It explores the notion of a "game changer", prompting the observer to imagine what this new sport – one in which the old rules don't apply – would be like.
In 2010, Basquet Ball was loaned to the Francis Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College for Opener 19, an exhibition that combined drawings from the previous ten years with recent sculpture by this Havana-based collective,
Marco Antonio Castillo Valdes and Dagoberto Rodriguez Sanchez.
Basquet Ball can be viewed in the Yawkey Center, Floor 8.