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A captivating work of cultural blending unlike anything created prior, Andrew Archer´s Edo Ball must be seen to be believed. This series of paintings seamlessly fuses contemporary basketball imagery with Edo-period Japanese art and culture, with captivating results. Each image riffs on a classic Japanese painting or subject, adding a surprisingly weighty visual twist as Archer´s deft world-building weaves these disparate visual iconographies into a cohesive whole. Often front and center, an NBA personality is dramatically reimagined and yet recognizable, surrounded
by the myriad trappings of the "floating" world.
See Hokusai´s The Great Wave off Kanagawa reimagined as a court bursting apart at the floorboards and carried forward by a surge of hundreds of basketballs. A Torii gateway becomes the backstop for a basketball hoop, with a backdrop of mountains and a vast, snowy sky. Brief, accompanying texts describe the thematic connections between each painting´s converging themes, and explore the roles that culture, community, celebrity, and games play in our daily lives.

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