work
Championship points
| category | Painting |
| subject | Travels, Political / Social, Landscape, Abstract |
| tags | bitumen paint, world, tennis, IN&OUT, hawk-eye, goal, achievement, Eugen Fink, play, symbol |
| base | 240 cm |
| height | 18 cm |
| depth | 3 cm |
| year | 2024 |
bitumen, concrete, acrylic sprays on used photographic paper and cardboard, 9 elements, 14x18 cm each, hammered edge for plasterboard
In tennis, a championship point is the point that awards the trophy at stake. The very last, the deciding one. Sometimes what decides the match is a winner (IN), sometimes an opponent's error (OUT). In any case when a player is not convinced by the umpires' call, Hawk-eye intervenes. Hawk-eye is the instant replay of tennis, an unfailing computerized system capable of unraveling the matter in a snap, by unequivocally establishing the exact impact point of the ball on court.
Championship Points therefore is a series of 9 small paintings on reclaimed photographic paper and cardboard, made while I was following the live matches of the Australian Open 2024, the first Slam of the new tennis season.
The Grand Slam tennis trophies (4 over the course of each season) are the most important and prestigious in terms of tradition, monetary prize and points awarded. At the men's level are the only ones played to the best of five sets, with matches that sometimes result in exhausting battles, well over four consecutive hours of play. They always take place at the same point of the calendar year and for all practitioners, regardless of gender or nationality, from the child who starts as a game (the dream), to the more or less established professional, they represent the most difficult and coveted goals of the sport. Sort of the perfect landing - affirmation and crowning achievement of an entire career.
Looking for the recordings of the previous 8 men's finals (since 2016) I determined each of those decisive shots, and then reproduced them in bituminous paint as a hawk's eye frame, regardless of whether the point verification system had actually intervened. Then the paintings are the result of my interpretation of the available footage. The ninth and last item in the series, represents the decisive point of the 2024 final won by the young Italian champion Jannik Sinner so only completed on Sunday, Jan. 28 at the end of the match (waiting is also part of the play).
Having studied each point, for each element I know who won and whether it is an IN or an OUT, but the ambiguity that each small painting possesses by omitting this data adds depth to the work. More than that, some still remain indecipherable regardless of having any knowledge of the playing court conformation and since even in everyday life, perceiving oneself or being perceived as IN or OUT is a deeply complicated affair - one prone to an up and down worthy of the most twisty rollercoaster - tennis in my opinion (by essence and specific terminology), fits perfectly the interplay around these concepts and the even complex, articulate, multifaceted journey which is life.
Play - understood in the sense of an extremely serious and dramatic activity which Eugen Fink gives of it in the essay The Play as Symbol of the World - as an excellent tool for the philosophical interpretation of the whole since it presupposes victory and defeat, presupposes opposites, rules and even surplus to rules. Such a reliable human system, which allows different peoples with different languages, different repertoires of symbols, to communicate by arriving at mutual translations. Game as language then, as a moment of universal communication, but at the same time of separateness and sometimes brutal clash with others or as in tennis, first of all with oneself.
In tennis, a championship point is the point that awards the trophy at stake. The very last, the deciding one. Sometimes what decides the match is a winner (IN), sometimes an opponent's error (OUT). In any case when a player is not convinced by the umpires' call, Hawk-eye intervenes. Hawk-eye is the instant replay of tennis, an unfailing computerized system capable of unraveling the matter in a snap, by unequivocally establishing the exact impact point of the ball on court.
Championship Points therefore is a series of 9 small paintings on reclaimed photographic paper and cardboard, made while I was following the live matches of the Australian Open 2024, the first Slam of the new tennis season.
The Grand Slam tennis trophies (4 over the course of each season) are the most important and prestigious in terms of tradition, monetary prize and points awarded. At the men's level are the only ones played to the best of five sets, with matches that sometimes result in exhausting battles, well over four consecutive hours of play. They always take place at the same point of the calendar year and for all practitioners, regardless of gender or nationality, from the child who starts as a game (the dream), to the more or less established professional, they represent the most difficult and coveted goals of the sport. Sort of the perfect landing - affirmation and crowning achievement of an entire career.
Looking for the recordings of the previous 8 men's finals (since 2016) I determined each of those decisive shots, and then reproduced them in bituminous paint as a hawk's eye frame, regardless of whether the point verification system had actually intervened. Then the paintings are the result of my interpretation of the available footage. The ninth and last item in the series, represents the decisive point of the 2024 final won by the young Italian champion Jannik Sinner so only completed on Sunday, Jan. 28 at the end of the match (waiting is also part of the play).
Having studied each point, for each element I know who won and whether it is an IN or an OUT, but the ambiguity that each small painting possesses by omitting this data adds depth to the work. More than that, some still remain indecipherable regardless of having any knowledge of the playing court conformation and since even in everyday life, perceiving oneself or being perceived as IN or OUT is a deeply complicated affair - one prone to an up and down worthy of the most twisty rollercoaster - tennis in my opinion (by essence and specific terminology), fits perfectly the interplay around these concepts and the even complex, articulate, multifaceted journey which is life.
Play - understood in the sense of an extremely serious and dramatic activity which Eugen Fink gives of it in the essay The Play as Symbol of the World - as an excellent tool for the philosophical interpretation of the whole since it presupposes victory and defeat, presupposes opposites, rules and even surplus to rules. Such a reliable human system, which allows different peoples with different languages, different repertoires of symbols, to communicate by arriving at mutual translations. Game as language then, as a moment of universal communication, but at the same time of separateness and sometimes brutal clash with others or as in tennis, first of all with oneself.
