A pair of white shoes runs quickly, but remains in place. These are not just any shoes, they are a miniature copy of Air Jordan shoes, which were marketed with a promise of wondrous powers, in the famous 1985 ad by Nike and Michael Jordan: “Who said man was not meant to fly?”
The exhibition contains black and white objects and images borrowed from the world of sports and fitness labels and international consumer culture, on the cultural continuum between pop and hip-hop. They include: shiny shoe shelves like in a Foot Locker store, the basketball referee shirt used as a uniform for employees of the chain, a model of a luxury car covered in a glossy liquid, drawings of digital clocks that display different times within the span of shots in a basketball game, plaster Air Jordan shoes, and more.
In the gallery, a threatening, deep, repetitive sound can be heard, which pulsates and roars like a vehicle accelerating in an endless circular tunnel. All of these elicit the feeling of a tense yet familiar situation. Upon close observation, it appears that each of the objects and images in the exhibition, most of which were created on a uniform mass production line, alienated and uniform, has benefited from artistic interference which altered them and made them unique, even if defective, truncated, fragile or dainty.
The fast pace that characterizes hip-hop, the world of advertising and the social networks – is interrupted. And a single moment from within it is stretched round and round, like circular time in a mechanical clock, until the reflections of light on the shiny black surfaces no longer radiate style and glamor, but a dull sense of tragedy, loneliness, and human, poetic artistic sensitivity.
