Provenance
The Artist
Catalogue Essay
AWOL ERIZKU
Born 1988, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Lives and works in New York, NY and Los Angeles, CA

2014 MFA, Yale University, New Haven, CT
2010 BA, The Cooper Union School of Art, New York, NY

Selected museum exhibitions: The FLAG Art Foundation, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museo Stefano Bardini, Florence
Selected public collections: The FLAG Art Foundation, New York and the Mott-Warsh Collection, Flint, Michigan

LA-based artist Awol Erizku is among the most exciting artists of his generation. Installation, performance, photography, conceptual art and social media meld in his hands to create a vibrant currency. Deftly bridging the gap between fine art and popular culture, Erizku was catapulted to widespread fame in early 2017 for his pregnancy portraits of Beyoncé, which quickly became Instagram’s most popular post of all time. This was perhaps the crowning moment of Erizku’s quick rise in the art world ever since his exhibition debut in 2011 when his work was selected for the critically acclaimed exhibition Art² alongside the likes of Richard Prince and Roy Lichtenstein at the FLAG Foundation in New York. The photograph exhibited, which depicted his sister posing as Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, helped him land representation by a New York gallery when he was only 24.

Erizku’s incisive approach to subverting the history of art also informs Oh what a feeling, aw, fuck it, I want a billion. With a sly nod to Donald Judd’s stacks and 1960s minimalism, Erizku in has aligned seven basketball rims with a miniature basketball resting atop the highest basket. As Erizku recalled in a 2014 interview with Paul Laster in Whitehot Magazine, “I thought it would be interesting to replace the stacked boxes with basketball hoops, a reference to David Hammons, and also signifiers of my life in New York City.” Born in 1988 in Ethiopia, Erizku grew up in South Bronx, New York and studied art at Cooper Union, and later at Yale University. As Erizku continues to explain, “The piece operates as a striking metaphor, embodying the anxieties inherent to life as a young contemporary artist by aligning basketball with the practice of making art—both are games, shaped half by talent and half by luck. If you ask me, you have more to chew on when you look at those stacked hoops than those metal boxes.”

Music and contemporary culture plays a critical role in Erizku’s work. The stacked hoops, as he recalled, were “highly influenced by Jay Z’s ‘Picasso Baby,’ specifically the line, ‘Oh what a feeling, aw, fuck it, I want a trillion.’ It’s a metaphor; people who understand hip-hop know what that means.” Embodying the hopes and economic plight of his generation, the debut of this series in the exhibition The Only Way is Up in 2014 was accompanied by a hip-hop mixtape Erizku created in collaboration with DJ Kitty Cash: “Music is universal and I wanted to create a musical definition of my work that spoke to my generation about the issues and ideas my work represents."

55

Awol Erizku

Oh, what a feeling, fuck it, I want a Billion

mixed media with seven regulation size basketball rims and Spalding NBA basketball
148 1/8 x 18 7/8 x 24 3/8 in. (376 x 48 x 62 cm.)
Executed in 2018, this work is an edition of 1 plus 1 artist's proof.

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AMERICAN AFRICAN AMERICAN

New York Selling Exhibition 10 January - 8 February 2019

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Charles Alston
Untitled Abstract
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Ed Clark
The Stove
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Abstraction No. 2
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Icarus
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Untitled
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Tubing Form
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Julie
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Untitled (Circuit Landscape Series)
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Untitled, Ethnic Heritage Series
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Abner & Alleane
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Stanley Whitney
Untitled
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Rapunzel
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Loin
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Morning: The Broken Wheel
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Ecstasy #1
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Red Shack
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Untitled
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Untitled (I am an Invisible Man...)
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Untitled
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All Colors Stacks
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Looking for the Right Spot
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Passing/Posing, Jean de Carodelet
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Diamond in the Rough
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Domestic Life
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Highway
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Cut
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Dread Scott
Four performance stills from I Am Not a Man: (i) still 60; (ii) still 68; (iii) still 114; (iv) still 220
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Hot Coals in Soul
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Bale Variant #0021
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Target (In & Out) #7
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1872 South
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Civil Rights Throw Rug (7200.43)
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No Way But This
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The Bride to Be
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The Marvelous Sugar Baby Production Model in Bronze
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Madagascar 1
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No. 5
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Color Men
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Grand Prize!
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So What
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Fabrication Station 14
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BAM (Seated Warrior Queen)
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Old Slave Quarters
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Ayana V. Jackson
Seeking the Source of Perfection
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State's Rights (Brown et al. vs The Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas) (Limited Value Exercise)
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Deana Lawson
Barbara and Mother
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48
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Exposure (_2000921), Exposure (_2000877), Exposure (_2000915), Exposure (_2000930), Exposure (_2000917)
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Then is Now
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Hortense's Mirror
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The Making Of
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Atelier
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Vaginal Davis
(i) Misty Copeland (ii) Cyd Charisse (iii) Isadora Duncan (iv) Martha Graham (v) Jane Avril (vi) Raven Wilkinson (vii) Two Mary Wigmans (viii) Martha Graham in Serenata Morisca
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Florine Démosthène
Where is the love you promised me...Where is it?
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55
Awol Erizku
Oh, what a feeling, fuck it, I want a Billion
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Alteronce Gumby
My President's Orange but my Painting is still Blue
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Texas Isaiah
Space Beneath my Feet
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La Cama
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Healing Hand
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Adam Pendleton
WHAT IS THE...
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Jacolby Satterwhite
Anton
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Found the Sea Like the River
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DALMATIAN NO. 6 (Desert Storm)
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Pathfinder
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Untitled, Ethnic Heritage Series
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Untitled
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Tomashi Jackson
Citrus Flavored Drink (Over and Under) (Bolling vs Sharpe Briggs vs Elliot)
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