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Athletes

2007

“Athletes” was an exhibition that I had in Vallery, a gallery in Barcelona in April 2007. There I showed 13 portraits of my favorite athletes. The portraits are printed on canvas, 83x120 cm (33x47 inches).

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"This exhibition is a tribute to my favorite athletes of all time. Some of them I used to like when I was a child, some of them I like today and most of them I will probably like forever. Great athletes have always fascinated me. They are the pop-stars of today. They make ridiculous amounts of money for being good at what they do, date the most beautiful women, live in amazing houses and drive fancy cars.

So when I started to think about who were my favorite athletes, I realized that most of them were the most successful ones, the most famous and best known. I guess my taste is a bit shallow, but I’ve never understood the idea of supporting the underdog. Why support Liverpool when you can support Manchester United. Why support Mika Hakkinen when you can support Michael Schumacher. I guess in some cases it has something to do with where you were born, or how you were raised, but I still don’t get it. I guess that’s just me being ignorant. I also found out that I only support players, not teams. So if a player I like is sold to another team, I follow him.

Michael Jordan once said: “To be successful you have to be selfish, or else you never achieve. And once you get to your highest level, then you have to be unselfish. Stay reachable. Stay in touch. Don't isolate.”

When I was younger I was really into all kinds of sports, football, handball and especially basketball. I participated in it, watched it on TV and played it on the computer. I was never good at football, too much running and too little stamina. But I think I was quite good at basketball, less running and I had the advantage of being a bit taller than most of the other boys.

But to be honest, today I'm no longer really into sports. I don’t work out and I almost never play basketball. I just sit in front of the computer, draw, drink and smoke. But for weird reason I love to read about sports, to see how the games went, who scored the goals and so on. Occasionally I go to a bar to watch big and important soccer games, while smoking and drinking. I stopped following the NBA after Jordan resigned, for the second time. But I hear Kobe Bryant is doing really well and Scottie Pippen might be thinking about playing again.

I guess I just think the idea of pretending to like sports is funny."

Text from the exhibition catalogue.


Athletes logo


Gianluigi Buffon


David Beckham


Carl Lewis


Scottie Pippen


Michael Jordan


Dennis Rodman


Larry Bird


Eiður Smári Guðjohnsen


Shaquille O'Neal


Rudi Völler


Staffan "Faxi" Olsson


Michael Schumacher


Eric Cantona