The Space Jam Art Show Is Very Real and Very Serious

Space Jam is a new exhibit from artist Devin Troy Strother inspired by the movie, Space Jam. The movie, a Looney Tunes cartoon farce that endures as the greatest acting performance ever put forth by a professional athlete, is the fast way to a conversation that begins with, "Remember the 90s?" In other words, I expected a nostalgia trip. But Space Jam (from here on I am referring to the exhibition, not the movie) avoids glib cliche, using the iconography of 90s basketball, especially Michael Jordan, as canvas and kit to paint a vivid reminder of why anyone might have grown up caring about the sport.

When you walk into the Marlborough gallery in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, the first thing you notice is the floor. There are two main rooms to the exhibit, which opened in the middle of January. In the first is a rug adorned with planets, stars, and suns in imitation of your childhood wallpaper and the antiquated Space Jam website that still exists as a curio of internets past; in the second is a hardwood basketball court. Gold-plated rims are mounted on top of monoliths ripped from 2001: A Space Odyssey, an homage to the hallowed ritual of hooping it up. (Which, in the movie, is recreated when Jordan's father, resurrected by actor Thom Barry, gently guides his son through a backyard shootaround right before the opening credits snap us to the modern day.)

As you'd hope for an art exhibit inspired by Space Jam, there's a sense of humor. Take "I got 7 Michael Jordan's and a Jackson Pollock all over my brand new holograms," in which Pollock's signature paint splatter is replicated over a silvery holographic canvas. Instead of dirt on your kicks, it's Pollock on your Topps. The conflation of high art and sport was enough to make me laugh, and it was a far more playful way of evoking the connection than another post-FreeDarko essay about why Rajon Rondo is actually like jazz.

A giant still of Michael Jordan about to dunk over the Chicago skyline—which I swear is ripped from a trading card I could dig up if I rooted around my childhood bedroom—is slathered with color, paint dripping off the frame as Jordan crosses from man to myth. Miniatures of Jordan painted with blackface are left in this technicolor afterbirth, which I read as commentary on Jordan's apoliticism in unflagging deference to commerce during his playing career. (The apocryphal quote as excuse for not donating to the campaign against notoriously racist North Carolina senator Jesse Helms: "Republicans buy sneakers, too.") Or, more bluntly, a suggestion that Jordan was minstreling it up by smiling alongside Bugs and the gang for what is, essentially, a 90-minute commercial for a personal brand. (When Jordan is whisked away to Looney Tune Land, the Granny character remarks "It's Air Jordan!"—Do they get Nike ads in cartoon world?)

It's not just that Strother is using such racially-charged iconography to poke at the Jordan myth—it's that he's poking at the Jordan myth, period, rather than stewing in wan memories. Aside from Bill Russell, no player has ever defined an entire decade like Michael Jordan did the 90s. He's a one-man time capsule. As with any form of retromania, this comes at the expense of some truths. I can't tell you how many Jordan photos and jerseys I've seen on the social media feeds of millennials I know don't remember watching him play, and probably don't know about any of the sociopathic tendencies that serve as the real connective tissue between him and Kobe Bryant.

But the exhibit isn't really about critiquing Jordan, I think. It's about quoting basketball as basketball, about remembering the 90s not with retro irony but with actual respect for Mitchell and Ness windbreakers, Gatorade commercials, Del Harris, "I'm not a role model," Vlade Divac, John motherfucking Starks. The 90s don't feel so long ago, but the aesthetic difference is jarring. We're all wearing fewer turquoise windbreakers, for one, but on a macro level everything's gone sleek and monochrome, technicolor goofiness phased out for hard realism. Analytics are in; Allen Iverson is out.

It's impossible to imagine someone like LeBron James taking center stage for a Space Jam sequel—and not just because when compared with Jordan's dazzling charisma, every modern athlete looks like a math nerd trying to flirt. Moving from piece to piece, I was reminded of how far our modern fandom's come.

This wouldn't work without Space Jam itself, which is reviled in certain tight-assed circles of the modern basketball blogosphere that approach the sport with rigorous didacticism at the expense of humor. It's a movie in which Michael Jordan plays basketball with the Looney Tunes—you either like it or you don't. Well, I do. Space Jam can't be broken down like the Spurs' pick-and-roll, and if Strother avoids the comfort of nostalgia, he's still tapping into a pure space for many fans, a basketball of good and evil, where being a fan is simple as saying you are. If I can see it, then I can do it. If I just believe it, there's nothing to it. Or rather: everybody get up, it's time to slam now.