Jesse James
The NBA season officially off and running after being put on hold due to COVID-19. With things getting into full swing, artist Victor Solomon decided to celebrate the game the only way he knows how through creativity. The artist took over a dilapidated basketball court, transforming the space while using the traditional Japanese technique of Kintsugi.
The technique is a centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery. Opposed to repairing the ceramic pieces with a hidden adhesive, the Kintsugi technique employs a special tree sap lacquer dusted with powdered gold, or silver, or platinum. Solomon and his team took to a basketball court in southern Los Angeles. They filled the cracks of the court using gold-dusted resin, creating an eye-catching and unique design in the process.
The artist released a statement regarding his work. He told HYPEBEAST: “With the heartbreaking beginning to 2020 and this weekend’s return of basketball – I’ve been thinking about the parallels between sport as a uniting platform to inspire healing and my ongoing experiments with the technique of Kintsugi that embellishes an object’s repair with gold to celebrate it’s healing as formative part of the journey.” The artist and his team also repainted the court’s surface and replaced the court’s backboards and hoops.
Check out the court in the images and take a closer look at the process in the video below. In the meantime, keep it locked with The Culture Curators for more from the art department coming very soon.
Photos via Shafik Kadi
