The museum shows the trend of tennis that athletes and other celebrities have used
The Angels – "Sneakertopia" a museum pop up”Dedicated to the culture of sneakers, in English sneakers, opens this Friday to the public in Los Angeles with an integrative and artistic message and protagonists from all areas, from Michael Jordan to Run DMC and Rihana.
"Sneakertopia It is a place that brings together the history of sneakers and celebrates it as a single culture“, Says Steve Brown, founder of this initiative with Steve Harris.
About the meaning of “Sneakertopia“, Brown said:“ It means expressing ourselves, making the best of us and expressing it as a art form".
When basketball and hip-hop became fashion trends in the 80s, sneakers became popular and became a “powerful cultural expression“, They point out.
The first exhibition of this Ephemeral and itinerant “museum” consists of a series of murals with famous people wearing their “sneakers” favorites, plus an important collection of what is known in some countries as "tennis shoes."
Its headquarters is a local HHLA shopping center, the old “Promenade” of the Angels.
"Sneakertopia”Is divided into representative sections of a culture that has followers among all social classes, races and genders.
Music is represented in the pavilion “The Festival”; Sports in "The Playground"; the Arts in "Art & Sole"; Entertainment in "The Backlot", and Fashions, in "Frugal".
"Let's see here the most special sports shoes that have ever been put together in an exhibition like this and we are going to see them in the context of the culture narrated by artists, ”said Brown, who summoned the sneakers collectors to exhibit them in“Sneakertopia".
Among the muralists invited to create works for the museum is Alejandro Poli Jr., of artistic name “Man One”, an angelian painter who has shaped his art in walls of low-income neighborhoods and in “Sneakertopia”Presents large-format portraits of some icons of the culture of sports shoes.
This culture “began with the poor people, with African Americans, Latinosthat is, people who did not have much money, ”he stressed.
Then the "sneakers" became fashionable and the following was "make them as something very precious, an art form"He told Efe" Man One. "
The artist pointed out that sports shoes began to acquire elite status in the mid-1980s when the expensive booties designed for basketball stars like Michael Jordan when I played for the Chicago Bulls team.
With his cans of spray paint, "Man One" has portrayed on the walls of "Sneakertopia”To pop singer Rihana Calzada with“ sneakers ”. And in the same mural appears “as a tribute” the face of the remembered composer of rap songs Nipsey Hussle.
Other artists portrayed by "Man One" are the American singer-songwriter Kanye West, Beyonce, Ariana Grande, Run DMC, Drake and others.
In each section of the museum there are showcases with slippers, including four pairs painted by hand by artist Sophie Mazzaro, originally from Germany, another guest invited to exhibit in “Sneakertopia", Which is considered" a fan of tennis shoes. "
A decade ago, living in Germany could not get the "exotic" models that were in the United States, according to Efe. “So I started painting them myself, to have these great creations that nobody else could have,” Mazzaro revealed.
Another striking museum mural is a photograph of a jump of the champion of “skate board” (skateboard) Lizzie Armanto, along with gigantic images of his colleagues in that sport Steve Caballero and Tony Hawk.
A work that leaves some pensive and others smiling is a red “sneaker” created by the artist Michael Murphy and that is hung in one of the rooms of the “museum”.
Looking at him from the front is a shoe and observing him from behind is a basketball player hitting the ball.
Another attraction of the museum are the giant or liliputian shoes of "Smoluk", a French-born artist based in Canada who manufactures collectible sneakers with recycled carton.
The museum "Sneakertopia“, Brown told Efe, it will continue with an itinerant stage through several cities in the United States in 2020.
By Iván Mejía
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