Gagosian is pleased to announce an exhibition of new tennis court paintings by Jonas Wood. The gallery’s tenth exhibition of Wood’s work, and its first based in Los Angeles, will open on March 12, prior to the 98th Academy Awards ceremony.
Produced in 2025 and 2026, each painting represents, in a distinct abstracted style, a match held at a prominent Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), or Olympic tournament. Viewed from behind the baseline, the entirety of each court is depicted in a foreshortened perspective. Neither players nor officials are shown, with spectating crowds indicated in some works by patterns of repeated brushstrokes. The paintings continue a series that Wood began in 2011, furthering his approach to the theme of sports while also engaging with abstraction and Pop art.
For Wood, the standardized dimensions and varied color schemes of tennis courts allow the series to function as a form of serial abstraction, with each work balancing unique and repeated elements. Using a heightened palette of saturated colors, he interprets the appearance and surface of each court, whether grass, clay, or hard court. Also included in the paintings are nets, umpires’ chairs, courtside signage, banner advertisements, and other features that distinguish one stadium from another. Some paintings include on-screen graphics of player names and running scores, reinforcing that they represent moments of actual televised matches—except for one work, Nintendo 3 (2025), which is based on a video game the artist plays with his children.
Wood positions each court as a horizontal landscape image that spans a vertically oriented canvas. He paints some of the spaces flanking the courts as solid black blocks, conveying the experience of watching televised tennis matches in a darkened room. Developing other works with collaged compositions, Wood combines the tennis courts with a montage of imagery derived from domestic and studio views, other series of his paintings, and appropriated art. Painted patterns of wood grain (Wimbledon with Wood Grain, 2025, among others), a brick wall (Indian Wells, 2025), and speckled flooring (Mexican Open, 2025) all suggest interior spaces. Other works incorporate houseplants (Melbourne, 2025); a palm-filled landscape viewed through a window screen, echoing the grid of a tennis net (Vienna Open, 2025); the studio’s ceiling lights (Torino, 2025); sports cars (Porsche Tennis Grand Prix, 2025); and a collection of the artist’s working notes on a wall (Shanghai Masters, 2025). Bball Studio with Tennis Court (2026) is a related painting that depicts a cohesive view of Wood’s studio with a tennis match playing on a television.
These paintings refer both to spaces where Wood lives and works and to his overall practice, which combines dynamic abstractions of everyday life with art historical precedents. In three canvases, Paris Olympics with Crying Girl (2025), Dubai with Nude with Blue Hair (2026), and Hamburg Open with Girl (2026), he expands the scope of the series with interpretations of the Roy Lichtenstein prints Crying Girl (1963), Nude with Blue Hair (1994), and Girl (1963) that acknowledge his affinities with Pop art and pay homage to Lichtenstein’s approach to abstraction and the crossover between painting and printmaking techniques in his work.
Gagosian will publish a fully illustrated catalogue to accompany the exhibition.
