Known for his portraits of stylish Black people painted from the ‘60s onward, Barkley L. Hendricks’ lesser-known body of work merging minimalism and basketball is now on view at Chelsea’s Jack Shainman Gallery. Between attending the Pennsylvania Academy of Art and Yale, Hendricks worked for the Philadelphia Department of Recreation as an artist with access to the courts and games that inspired pieces like ‘Two!’ Though the ball is in motion here, a sense of stillness pervades, as if the artist is savoring a moment in a game. Though circular and rectangular forms dominate and bring to mind hard-edge abstraction, Hendricks evokes the flat stillness of a momentous scene in an early Renaissance painting. (On view in Chelsea through April 30th).
