
WB (Warn a Brotha)
2017
Constructed from corrugated metal, house latex, spray acrylic, and paper, and anchored by two functioning chainlink basketball hoops, "WB (Warn a Brotha)" is among the most formally ambitious works Awol Erizku produced in 2017. The piece operates simultaneously as painting, sculpture, and cultural signifier, collapsing the boundary between the found object and the art object. The corrugated metal ground carries the residue of vernacular architecture, neighborhoods built from necessity and ingenuity, while the layered paint surface speaks directly to Erizku's ongoing investigation into the language of abstraction as it intersects with Black American visual culture. The basketball hoops are not decorative additions but load-bearing conceptual elements. Sport, particularly basketball, functions in Erizku's practice as a coded social space, a site of aspiration, surveillance, and communal identity, and embedding two chainlink hoops into a painterly field charges the work with an urgency that purely formal abstraction could not achieve alone. The title itself, drawn from urban vernacular, introduces a note of solidarity and alertness, suggesting that the work is less a neutral aesthetic proposition than a form of direct address. At roughly 259 by 251 centimeters, the piece commands physical space in a manner proportional to its intellectual weight. Erizku, whose practice spans photography, installation, and painting, has attracted sustained institutional and collector attention since his landmark restaging of Manet's "Olympia" with a Black model in 2015. Works from this period demonstrate his most confident integration of material experimentation with sociopolitical critique, and "WB (Warn a Brotha)" stands as a key example of that synthesis. For collectors seeking work that holds its conceptual ground across time, this piece represents an important acquisition.
- Medium
- House latex, spray acrylic and paper on corrugated metal with metal and chainlink basketball hoops
- Overall
- Signed
- Yes
- Spotted At
- Gallery · Phillips
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