ARO HEAD: THE IMPRINT OF CHAMPIONS

at the Museo Arte de Puerto Rico
Written and directed by Papo Colo
Performed by the Puerto Rican Olympic Basketball Team
Curator Laura Roulet
Executive Producer Jeanette Ingberman
Project Director Camila Marambio
Produced By MECA with EXIT ART and MAPR

The Puerto Rican Olympic Basketball Team converges with art to create a conceptplus installation. See how your favorite players created images of their best moves and created a collective visual portrait of themselves, an installation of Puerto Rican art.

ARO HEAD: THE IMPRINT OF CHAMPIONS
The action took place in the legendary Escuela Superior Central, located two blocks from the museum. Two canvases, 20 x 12 ft, where spread out along the floor. The basketball team then simulated their practice warm up and as they played on top of the canvases their sneakers and basketballs which where dipped into 3 colors of paint (green, blue and red) left imprints of their moves on the canvas. A stamp pattern began to form and the final product transformed the performance into a neo impressionistic painting (in reference to the first Puerto Rican painter Francisco Oller).

This painting was then hung on the wall of the Museum with the basketball hoop in its center, creating a kind of sculptural collage. On the floor, opposite the wall, an installation of cast hands in the throwing position completed the experience of the performance.

With this performance event and its following installation, the artist gave the extraordinary athletes an opportunity to create something outside of the sports world. The artist became an interpreter of their feelings, training the players to create in another area of cultural expression, the metaphor of the artist as a coach perfectly describes the psychological management of the players by the artist or cultural producer. The artist, Papo Colo, became a cultural producer.

The performance’s purposes where: to bridge the arts with other areas of popular culture – sports are an art form. To create new mythologies, new heroes and new readings of what influences society. To promote extraordinary dedication and teamwork. To introduce a new public to art, by way of sports. To give national heroes a permanent place in the museum and to invite artist and curators to use the conceptplus method.

ARO HEAD is a novel approach to understanding the intelligence of sports. To reading culture through art and making a profit that serves all.