MITOCHONDRIA GALLERY
The Crossover
Opening Weekend :
Friday, December 10, 5:00pm to 9:00pm
Saturday, December 11th, 12:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Address: 2101 Winter Street, Houston, TX 77007.
The Crossover surveys the intricacies associated with pursuing our dreams. It tells stories of migration, mental exhaustion, isolation, healing, courage, and acceptance.
Former professional basketball player turned artist, Nick George, presents these stories in a collage of artworks that take us on a journey through challenging life phases from adolescence to adulthood. The Crossover is an expansion of his unique and identifiable style that contains elements of pop art and neo-expressionism.
Nick employs a variety of mediums to create the works in his first solo exhibition. Using acrylics, pastels, pencils and more, the artist builds layers of imagery that immerse the viewer into his world. Layered on the facial structure of his subjects are notes, logograms, pictograms, and characters. He expands beyond portraiture for the first time to explore figurines and colors in his backgrounds.
This body of work is also a study of the Black experience living in America and Europe from a professional athlete’s perspective. This concept is explored in several of his works and very specifically in “Capirote.”
The Crossover takes us on a journey of doubt, hope, valor, and restoration. The exhibition is an examination of what is expected from us based on our past, and the courage to go in a different direction.
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Artist Statement
The title of the show is named after a basketball move called “the crossover.” The crossover move is a way of faking out other basketball players by rapidly switching the ball from one hand to the other and changing direction of travel. I feel as though I have crossed over in life. I have spent a long time in the world of sports and finally found the right moment to change direction in order to create a new opportunity.
-Nick George
About Nick George
Nick George (b. 1982, Manchester, England) is a former professional athlete turned expressionist painter. He always had a passion for visual and performing arts as well as basketball. He moved to Maryland, U.S.A as a teenager on a basketball scholarship where he attended Montrose Christian High School. He played Division I College basketball at Virginia Commonwealth University in the Colonial Athletic conference CAA (Regular season and Tournament champion, CAA conference, 2004). He played professionally in Spain, France, Switzerland and Italy. He also represented Great Britain in FIBA Eurobasket.
His travels across the world as an athlete have heavily influenced his art-making in distinctive ways, enabling him to investigate new ideas of culture and beauty. George’s portraits, which are an amalgamation of people he has met through his journey, derive inspiration from abstraction, exploding in a flourish of colorful, exuberant energy married with poetry and symbolism. The subject matter, like much of his work, references the black experience in Europe, his journey as an athlete, and his early upbringing.
Nick’s works are found in collections across the United States, and Europe. His first group exhibition in 2021 occurred in June at Mitochondria Gallery in Houston, Texas. He later made his debut in the United Kingdom, in August at the Chilli Art Project, London.