About the Piece

Originally shown at Commonwealth and Council gallery

Carmen Argote’s work and process reveal a duality at play between sites, or between histories, often having to do with movement between places, transplantation, and adaptation. Painting for an exterior wall (2014) is a 6 by 7 feet of stretched canvas that mirrors the same color and painted lines of the handball courts in LAUSD elementary schools. Made mobile, this court can freely move between districts and neighborhoods, becoming a site of transference and muscle memory. Repeat actions mark the surface of the painting like bruises from dirt on a rosy pink handball that resembles an old eraser.

-David Bell