Ashley Teamer: Sneaker B̶o̶y̶ Dreams

Ashley Teamer: Sneaker B̶o̶y̶ Dreams organized by Third Object May 21 – June 18, 2017 Reception for the Artist Sunday, May 21, 4:00 – 7:00 P.M. New Orleans-based artist Ashley Teamer mines the world of professional basketball for her visual vocabulary. Her multimedia installation at 4th Ward Project Space brings together the various facets of her practice––including painting, collage, and animation––into the artist’s first one-person exhibition. A sneakerhead in her own right, Teamer merges abstract painting with athletics. She borrows patterns from Air Jordan sneakers for her compositions and uses collectible posters as canvases for her lively forms. Her collages are densely packed with kaleidoscoping limbs and body parts sourced from vintage WNBA trading cards. She depicts these female athletes as superhuman, suspended in motion, and not of this world. With afrofuturism as a guiding force for some of this new work, Teamer’s animations cast WNBA legends like Sheryl Swoopes and Lisa Leslie as the protagonists who escape the confines of Earth to float through psychedelic, unpopulated landscapes. While Teamer’s work expresses an obsessive interest in the sport and its associated gear, the suite of works in Sneaker B̶o̶y̶ Dreams seeks to find a place of recognition and veneration for female athletes within the patriarchy. Ashley Teamer was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her work explores the complexities of black femininity through painting, collage, and animation. In both her visual and curatorial work, Ashley uses the object to inform and transform the gallery space. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ACRE, and Ox-Bow School of Art. Sneaker B̶o̶y̶ Dreams is organized by Third Object, an independent curatorial collective based in Chicago. Third Object is Ann Meisinger, Raven Falquez Munsell, and Gan Uyeda. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication and poster with an essay by Third Object and an interview between Ashley Teamer and ACRE Development Director Dana Bassett. http://ashleyteamer.com http://thirdobject.net