Free Throw

Free Throw was a living installation in the Bakery building that opened concurrently with a city-wide NBA event, and continued over the period of one month. The exhibition featured ninety-two lost and flooded basketballs gathered by Chris Sullivan in the months following hurricane Katrina. After carefully retrieving the basketballs from a variety of dire circumstances, the artist spent long hours cleaning and restoring them by hand. The basketballs were displayed in formal grid pattern along with a hoop on the Bakery’s interior walls.

Robert Tannen complimented the display with his series of ninety-two Basketball Portraits. Graphite works on paper, the portraits were laid out in a similar grid to that of the actual basketballs. In each portrait, the unique character and personality of the individual basketball was explored. Blake Boyd exhibited assemblages of possessions once belonging to a former roller-skating basketball star who died of overdose by Twinkie along with the newspaper article describing his life and fate. Dan Tague performed as referee and one-on-one challenger.

This was the first un-curated exhibition at KKProjects. Sullivan appeared at the door and pointed out that there was nowhere to play basketball. After all parties agreed that this was indeed problematic, the artist returned with his collection and a hoop. At this point, the installation took shape. An average of ten neighborhood kids showed up after school to shoot hoops in what ordinarily served as the very quiet KKProjects’ office space, where preceding installations were minimalist and of Zen-like quality. At the end of the month, and at the end of a valiant philosophical deliberation, the by-now quite happy (though quite unorganized, their papers all aflutter) staff decided to let the installation come to its conclusion. Of course, this met great protest.

Today, that basketball hoop exists outside KKProjects on the corner of N Villere and Music Street, where Mr. Coleman Adler, distinguished KKProjects board member, when not at Adler’s, may occasionally be found seeking basketball victory.