Gagosian is happy to announce an exhibition of recent tennis courtroom work by Jonas Wooden. The gallery’s tenth exhibition of Wooden’s work, and its first based mostly in Los Angeles, might be on view by April 25, 2026.
Produced in 2025 or 2026, every portray represents, in a definite abstracted type, a match held at a distinguished Affiliation of Tennis Professionals (ATP), Girls’s Tennis Affiliation (WTA), or Olympic event. Seen from behind the baseline, everything of every courtroom is depicted in a foreshortened perspective. Neither gamers nor officers are proven, with spectating crowds indicated in some works by patterns of repeated brushstrokes. The work proceed a collection that Wooden started in 2011, furthering his method to the theme of sports activities whereas additionally participating with abstraction and Pop artwork.
For Wooden, the standardized dimensions and diversified colour schemes of tennis courts enable the collection to perform as a type of serial abstraction, with every work balancing distinctive and repeated parts. Utilizing a heightened palette of saturated colours, he interprets the looks and floor of every courtroom, whether or not grass, clay, or onerous courtroom. Additionally included within the work are nets, umpires’ chairs, courtside signage, banner ads, and different options that distinguish one stadium from one other. Some work embody on-screen graphics of participant names and operating scores, reinforcing that they signify moments of precise televised matches—aside from one work, Nintendo 3 (2025), which is predicated on a online game the artist performs together with his youngsters.
Wooden positions every courtroom as a horizontal panorama picture that spans a vertically oriented canvas. He paints a number of the areas flanking the courts as stable black blocks, conveying the expertise of watching televised tennis matches in a darkened room. Growing different works with collaged compositions, Wooden combines the tennis courts with a montage of images derived from home and studio views, different collection of his work, and appropriated artwork. Painted patterns of wooden grain (Wimbledon with Wooden Grain, 2025, amongst others), a brick wall (Indian Wells, 2025), and speckled flooring (Mexican Open, 2025) all recommend inside areas. Different works incorporate houseplants (Melbourne, 2025); a palm-filled panorama seen by a window display, echoing the grid of a tennis web (Vienna Open, 2025); ceiling lights (Torino, 2025); and a set of working notes on a wall (Shanghai Masters, 2025). Bball Studio with Tennis Court docket (2026) is a associated portray that depicts a cohesive view of Wooden’s studio with a tennis match enjoying on a tv.
These work refer each to areas the place Wooden lives and works and to his general observe, which mixes dynamic abstractions of on a regular basis life with artwork historic precedents. In three canvases, Paris Olympics with Crying Woman (2025), Dubai with Nude with Blue Hair (2026), and Hamburg Open with Woman (2026), he expands the scope of the collection with interpretations of the Roy Lichtenstein prints Crying Woman (1963), Nude with Blue Hair (1994), and Woman (1963) that acknowledge his affinities with Pop artwork and pay homage to Lichtenstein’s method to abstraction and the crossover between portray and printmaking methods in his work.
