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Not A Sports Club

Why trophies?

 

I was raised with sports, playing soccer as a kid but came from a creative upbringing. To me, these two universes have always been separated. The form language in not a sports club is derived from sports but using ceramic sculptures as its medium. I wanted to work with the sentimental feeling of going to soccer tournaments when you were a kid, drinking slush-ice and eating shitty food on my own terms. I started playing soccer again two years ago with some friends, drinking beers on the field after a match, talking shit. I wanted to fuse those emotions with sculptures.

 

So the trophy format was chosen rather as a prerequisite than at random?

 

There’s something inherently cool about trophies because it’s already an art object within the world of sports. Everyone has a relation to sports but it seems like a lot of people, especially within the creative industry, keep it in the dark. Sports are fucking cool so I don’t see a reason not to use it in my work.

 

Do you think that’s a weird combination?

 

Not really. It felt like a natural extension of my adoration for sports. It’s been fun when people from the art industry asked me what I was working on, telling them that I was doing sports trophies. It didn’t make sense. Fuck, sometimes it didn’t even make sense to me but it felt like an honest element to work with. Sports has always been a part of me but it seems that the creative people of my generation sometimes perceive it as taboo.

 

Is it hard doing something that people have a hard time grasping?

 

It wasn’t difficult to materialize but people seem to have trouble wrapping their head around it.

 

Why is that?

 

In one way, it’s an art object; it’s a ceramic sculpture that people can buy. On the other hand, it’s a decorative object; people can put flowers in them and use them as a vase. And at the same time, it’s an object of achievement; you get a trophy when you’ve accomplished something. Showing them in a retail context fucks with people’s mind even more. I’m basically having people pay money for something that you usually get as a token of achievement.

 

Did you make it that way on purpose?

 

Not really but reaching that point couldn’t be avoided. The objects fuse different disciplines and reference points. Putting them in a retail context when presenting them in Wood Wood just fucks up people’s perception even more. If you look at fashion over the past couple of years, people have gravitated towards sportswear and references to that. You see fucking Kendall Jenner wearing a Paris Saint-Germain jersey and all that stuff but no one uses it for sports. It’s the same with not a sports club; people buy something that you never pay for in the original context of the object. It flips the way things work.

 

Do you like to fuck with people?

 

Not really but if my work fucks with them, that’s fine by me. Imagine walking into a trophy store, buying a gold trophy and putting it on your shelf at home. You’d never do that. Making the objects with the retail context in mind was a fun challenge. It makes it more accessible: it’s there in the store with a price and everything—if you want it, you can buy it. It makes it more fun rather than people having to book an appointment in a gallery and ask about a price list. It’s more open this way.

 

But should they buy it? As you said, they haven’t done anything to deserve it except having the money for it.

 

You get a trophy if you’ve won something. In my eyes, you’ve won something if you can afford my work. Fuck. Don’t put that in there. Please.

 

The exhibition not a sports club opens on May 24th at Wood Wood Copenhagen, Grønnegade 1, 1107 Copenhagen K, Denmark.

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