Literally Balling by Victor Solomon
Literally Balling by Victor Solomon
Victor Solomon’s “Literally Balling” appropriates luxury material and antiquated processes to parallel a history of impractical grandeur. Literally Balling is the result of Solomon’s year-long apprenticeship under the last remaining stained-glass masters and hundreds of hours of fastidious, historically accurate craftsmanship.
From as early as 600 AD, it’s rare materials and exhaustive process have made stained glass a paramount symbol of wealth and power. Throughout the 12th century, stained glass windows adorning monolithic cathedrals flexed on behalf of a manors reign. The irony of the embellishment: removing the window’s intended function.
As basketball and its stars ascend to new cultural dominance, re-building the sport’s iconic symbol with the same painstaking medium both celebrates its evolution and satirizes the same ironic instinct to trade intention for opulence.
Literally Balling elegantly balances wit, irony and fastidious craftsmanship in exploration of a host of disparate narratives: the religious devotion to sport, the athlete as modern-day king of court, the proletarian drift of basketball from project pick-up games to newfound cultural heights, even a cautionary comment on the fragility of luxury.
Artwork

Promise Land III by Victor Solomon
Promise Land III by Victor Solomon

Promise Land II by Victor Solomon
Promise Land II by Victor Solomon

Promise Land I by Victor Solomon
Promise Land I by Victor Solomon

Stack to the Ceiling by Victor Solomon
Stack to the Ceiling by Victor Solomon

Jump out the Face by Victor Solomon
Jump out the Face by Victor Solomon

Literally Balling ‘Zine “Volume 1” by Victor Solomon
Literally Balling ‘Zine “Volume 1” by Victor Solomon

Forever or Never by Victor Solomon
Forever or Never by Victor Solomon

Too Much Sauce by Victor Solomon
Too Much Sauce by Victor Solomon

Better Living by Victor Solomon
Better Living by Victor Solomon

Mono Flow by Victor Solomon
Mono Flow by Victor Solomon

Another Bag by Victor Solomon
Another Bag by Victor Solomon
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