City Edition
2024
Jonas Wood (b. 1977, Boston) "The Clippers approached me to design the court and uniforms and I couldn't say yes fast enough. It’s been a dream of mine to design a court."
"The Clippers approached me to design the court and uniforms and I couldn't say yes fast enough. It’s been a dream of mine to design a court. It's just an unbelievable opportunity. I’ve been going to Clippers games since I moved to LA, which was over 20 years ago, and I’ve been a season ticket holder for the last 5 seasons.
When I moved here, I was so inspired by the amazing weather, the plants, the lifestyle, and the vibrant colors. From the beginning I knew I wanted to put a big orchid on the court to give a nod to the things that inspire me most from this city.
My love for the NBA goes back to when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, during those booms in popularity, when teams had clean and simple uniforms with a nice colorway. I really like the Clippers’ uniforms and logos from the 70s and 80s, and wanted to think of a unique way to incorporate basketballs into those cool, retro logos. I also loved introducing the “Clips” wordmark onto the jersey. Clips just feels natural, and when you're at the games, that's what you hear from the fans. For me, the challenge of the jersey was making tweaks to something that's already great— giving a nod to history, but at the same time, making things fresh and moving into the future."
About Jonas Wood
Jonas Wood (b. 1977, Boston) makes paintings that can be classified as a variety of different genres, including portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and interior scenes. In each of these, however, his work reflects an instantly recognizable vision of the contemporary world, as well as a personal approach to subject matter defined by his affinities and experiences. Its warmth is matched by a quasi-abstract logic that breaks pictures down into layered compositions of geometry, pattern, and color. Wood works at every scale, and maintains active drawing and printmaking practices, each of which helps him generate techniques that he eventually uses in paintings. Conjuring depth using flat forms—his process involves collage-based studies in which he works with photographs, breaking images apart and reassembling them—Wood probes the boundary between the new and the familiar, integrating emotionally resonant material from everyday life.
Jonas Wood has been the subject of solo and two-person exhibitions at the Dallas Museum of Art (2019); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, the Netherlands (with Shio Kusaka, 2017); Lever House, New York (2014); and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010). Other solo projects include Still Life with Two Owls, a monumental picture covering the façade of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2016—2018); Shelf Still Life, High Line Billboard, High Line Art, New York (2014); and LAXART Billboard and Façade, LAXART, Los Angeles (2014). Recent group exhibitions include Since Unveiling: Selected Acquisitions of a Decade, The Broad, Los Angeles (2021–2022); Psychic Wounds: On Art and Trauma, The Warehouse, Dallas (2020); One Day at a Time: Manny Farber and Termite Art, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2018); and Los Angeles: A Fiction, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2016) and Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, France (2017). His work is in the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Broad, Los Angeles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2019, Phaidon published the first monograph dedicated to Wood’s paintings and drawings. Wood lives and works in Los Angeles. He is represented by David Kordansky Gallery, Gagosian, and Karma.