Every tiger has its own pattern of stripes. For artist Tyrrell Winston, the concept of a tiger’s stripes translates to the unique identity, pride, and legacy many feel about their favorite sports team. Best known for his gridded assemblages of found basketballs, Winston’s work is rooted in themes of memory, nostalgia, found objects, and sports culture. His particular focus on sports is, in part, because it is a collective act that society undertakes together.
Cranbrook Art Museum is hosting Winston’s first solo museum presentation. A Detroit-based artist, Winston collected weathered and torn basketball nets from around the city for his series, Network. He replaced old nets with new ones and transformed the worn nets into new dynamic textile works. He has created a new series of Protection Paintings, which juxtapose lacquered panels of metallic automotive paint and found discarded tarps (often used to protect cars from the elements), and a new Michigan-based series of Punishment Paintings, which replicate the autograph signatures of famous athletes over and over again.
Replicas—forgeries? —of Derek Jeter’s curling, loose signature create energy even without the fame component. This piece calls back to Cy Twombly’s renowned chicken-scratch paintings. A noticeable absence of color focuses attention to the larger, darker marks resting on layers of older, schmeared practice rounds. Sizes of the works were not provided, so I’ll put this around 8 feet by 5 feet adding scale to the use of positive and negative space as critical to a starkly minimal composition.
I may or may not have been sent to the blackboard to repeat a phrase designed to staunch an emerging rebellious inclination. From a strictly visual standpoint, there is peace in the rhythm of these duplicated shapes.
Solely as sculpture this doesn’t really resonate. As a salvaged piece of history, Winston triggers memories on any number of experiences including sitting above cheering on the home team or secreting below to smoke a cigarette or steal a kiss.
This installation keeps the viewer scanning the varied surfaces that range from smooth, to dimpled, to deflated. Winston employs that comforting rhythm in shape reiteration mildly disrupted by each basketball’s unique patterning.
Winston’s heavily textured net arrangement drips and sags to the floor nostalgic for afternoons on the court with friends taking a break from life’s challenges.
My grandfather was Captain of the 1933 University of Michigan national championship football team and my father worked at Sports Illustrated so sports have been woven into the fabric of my life from the jump. Dad was also an abstract painter and kept a studio most of his life. As I began my career as a visual artist, there was significant pushback to my love for football. Sports and art don’t mix. The first art review I ever wrote was on Nick Cave during his 2015 homecoming to Cranbrook Academy where, in addition to an astonishing body of work exhibited at the Cranbrook Art Museum, he staged several performances around town. When I saw this costume, my dueling passions were validated as compatible and I haven’t looked back since. Go Blue!
On view through September 25th at Cranbrook Art Museum 39221 Woodward Ave Bloomfield Hills
*images are mine unless otherwise noted
direct quote from museum materials
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