SPORT CULT

L, Jes Fan, Ross Knight, Maison Anonyme

Team (gallery, inc.) will present a group exhibition entitled SportCult from 06 December 2018 through 19 January 2019. The show will include work by four artists Jes Fan, Ross Knight, L and Maison Anonyme. The gallery is located at 83 Grand Street in New York, cross streets Wooster and Greene, on the ground floor.

SportCult exists somewhere at the intersection of the medical and entertainment fields. Like some kind of medical emergency played for laughs, SportCult focuses on the body; both its prowess and its inherent vice.

Fictions about sports participate in the construction of our ideals of nation, race and class. Sports narratives also traffic in such ineffables as non-sexual love and the adoration of the human body, while mapping out tales of character building and myth-making. Typically, melodramatic tales of victory and defeat strategize an affective call to the spectator’s emotions.

Leisure time is now largely constructed by almost unattainable goals of physical perfection fostered within the rhetoric of health and play. Sports, and their associated imagery, contribute to the conception of gender, sexuality and personal appearance. In addition, sports, through their rigorous structures, also help to define concepts such as cooperation and aggression.

1. Sports as a Source of National Pride: Bodies E(motion)
2. Constructing the Athletic Body
3. Teamwork: Camaraderie & the Sacrifice of the Individual
4. The Commerce of the Human Body, or the Business of Sports & the Sport of Business

Viewed through this lens, a group of four contemporary artists are portrayed as super-athletes, helping to foster a belief in the easy attainment of physical perfection.

Long live the new flesh.