Lots of 80’s Nostalgia this week and we save the best for last with Salon 94’s “For the Kids”, an exhibition of sports lithographs from the archives of John and Tock Costacos. The show serves as a mini-retrospective of early Costacos posters from 1986 through 1990. In addition to these works, pieces will be presented from Jeff Koons’s first solo exhibition, Equilibrium, the 1985 show that included basketballs floating in display tanks, cast bronze standard scuba diving tanks and framed advertising posters that appropriated imagery contained in Nike advertisements that preceded the earliest Costacos work. The Nike posters were purchased by Koons with the permission of the manufacturer, and were presented as his own artworks.
Costacos Brothers, originally a sports t-shirt manufacturer, built a reputation for “fantasy” sports posters that gave professional sports heroes a larger-than-life look and appeal. Their products captured the imagination of sports fans at a time when athletes were becoming pop stars. Without a license from professional sports leagues, they were unable to produce game action shots. Instead, they made personality posters, marrying pop culture to an athlete and his persona. They understood that at a certain point a player gains a public profile that transcends their team, catapulting them to individual stardom.
My buddy Alex used to have The Chicago Vice one up in his bed room seeing these again took me right back.
No comments:
Post a Comment