Taking Cubism Above The Rim
LaChance is best known for his brightly colored abstract work. His art has been permanently featured in the collections of the U.S. Federal Reserve, National Broadcasting Channel (NBC), and Nike, to only name a few.
But the Kinloch court was a new kind of artistic challenge. And that started with the 100-feet by 150-feet scale.
“It’s definitely the biggest painting I’ve ever done, which I’m really excited about,” says LaChance. “Thinking about the scale is one of the things that drove the imagery – just really capitalize on the bigness of it.”
But how would the artist approach bringing his epic canvas to life?
“The idea from the beginning was to treat the artwork as the ground for the figure/ground relationship, speaking in artistic terms,” says LaChance. “I wanted to keep it one unified image so that it’s just one big, big thing – also keeping it fundamentally abstract. I would refer to it as a cubist composition. The whole rationale behind cubism is that the viewer is never standing still when they’re looking at an object. They’re always moving so that’s why you have the different perspectives within one picture. Just thinking about playing basketball – it’s just constant kinetic energy. That’s why it’s broken up into multiple passages.”
LaChance believes that the people who ultimately use the court inherently become part of the art.
“The thinking is that when basketball games are happening, when people are using the courts, they’ll provide the figure too; when there are kids playing on it, that completes the composition,” explains LaChance.