NYAB Event - Derek Fordjour “The Big Game”

Derek Fordjour “The Big Game”

Storefront Ten Eyck

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Derek Fordjour draws on a variety of sources from American popular culture, including professional sports; board games; carnival and circus artifacts; and arcade, board and card games. The artist constructs images evocative of the allure, economics, politics and psychosocial implications of games. The work investigates questions of rewards and sanctions, merit and demerit, outcomes, potential and power. Issues of gender, race and class are a recurrent theme, embedded in both the narrative and the material of the artwork’s construction. The subjects are the players, the cheerleaders and the implied audience, which the artist uses to interrogate widely-held cultural norms and societal expectations within American life. Through his deft manipulation of a vocabulary of familiar images, Fordjour offers a broad social critique within the spectacle of sport. The work evokes a sense of loss, suggesting histories, personal and cultural, that are not completely revealed.

Derek Fordjour is an artist working in variety of media, primarily drawing and painting and sculpture. He studied at Pratt Institute and the Art Student’s League in New York City. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University and is currently pursuing an MFA in painting at Hunter College in New York City. His work is in several collections throughout the United States and Europe.