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Awol Erizku — Oh What a Feeling, aw Fuck It, I Want a Trillion
Awol Erizku

Oh What a Feeling, aw Fuck It, I Want a Trillion

2015

Suspended in the gallery at monumental scale, "Oh What a Feeling, aw Fuck It, I Want a Trillion" presents two basketball hoops strung together with gold plated chain, transforming a familiar object of urban athletic culture into a totemic sculpture that vibrates with aspirational energy. Awol Erizku, working in New York and deeply engaged with questions of Black identity, material desire, and institutional critique, reconfigures the basketball hoop as both symbol and subject. The sport's deep cultural resonance within Black American life sits in productive tension with the seductive weight of the gold chain, collapsing the distance between street-level ambition and luxury, between the body's labor and the gleam of imagined wealth. The work's title, drawn from the vernacular of unfiltered longing, announces its stakes without apology. Erizku does not aestheticize aspiration from a detached vantage point but inhabits it fully, allowing the brash specificity of the phrase to ground an otherwise formally elegant object. The modification for FLAG Art Foundation's space underscores the site-responsive dimension of the piece, where architectural context becomes part of the meaning, the institutional white cube forced into conversation with materials and references it rarely accommodates on their own terms. For collectors, the work represents a pivotal moment in Erizku's practice, predating his broader international recognition and capturing the raw conceptual directness that defines his early sculptural output. Its physical presence is commanding, its cultural argument precise, and its formal resolution between readymade and transformed object genuinely sophisticated. Signed works at this scale from this period are increasingly difficult to locate, making this an acquisition of both historical and aesthetic significance.

Medium
Basketball hoops and gold plated chain, modified for FLAG's space
Overall
Signed
Yes
Location
The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY

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About this work

Awol Erizku, Oh What a Feeling, aw Fuck It, I Want a Trillion, 2015

Suspended in the gallery at monumental scale, "Oh What a Feeling, aw Fuck It, I Want a Trillion" presents two basketball hoops strung together with gold plated chain, transforming a familiar object of urban athletic culture into a totemic sculpture that vibrates with aspirational energy. Awol Erizku, working in New York and deeply engaged with questions of Black identity, material desire, and institutional critique, reconfigures the basketball hoop as both symbol and subject. The sport's deep cultural resonance within Black American life sits in productive tension with the seductive weight of the gold chain, collapsing the distance between street-level ambition and luxury, between the body's labor and the gleam of imagined wealth. The work's title, drawn from the vernacular of unfiltered longing, announces its stakes without apology. Erizku does not aestheticize aspiration from a detached vantage point but inhabits it fully, allowing the brash specificity of the phrase to ground an otherwise formally elegant object. The modification for FLAG Art Foundation's space underscores the site-responsive dimension of the piece, where architectural context becomes part of the meaning, the institutional white cube forced into conversation with materials and references it rarely accommodates on their own terms. For collectors, the work represents a pivotal moment in Erizku's practice, predating his broader international recognition and capturing the raw conceptual directness that defines his early sculptural output. Its physical presence is commanding, its cultural argument precise, and its formal resolution between readymade and transformed object genuinely sophisticated. Signed works at this scale from this period are increasingly difficult to locate, making this an acquisition of both historical and aesthetic significance.

Medium
Basketball hoops and gold plated chain, modified for FLAG's space
Dimensions
overall: 375.9 x 48 x 62 cm
Year
2015
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY

Related themes

Mohn Art Collective

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