On view in "The World is Round"
MetroTech Center, Brooklyn
October 26, 2006 – September 9, 2007

The World is Round features new commissions and recent works by Jacob Dyrenforth, Diana Guerrero-Maciá, Chris Hanson & Hendrika Sonnenberg, Matt Johnson, and Ryan McGinness, all of whom have created works that explore collective consciousness and expression. Although the artists work in a variety of media and thematic areas, their practices are all linked by an interest in shared languages and systems, whether personal or political, formal or informal.

Chicago-based artist Diana Guerrero-Maciá's sculpture, The Beautiful Game in Black and White, explores the ways in which soccer has become a universal language understood and "spoken" by billions of people around the world. The work depicts a flattened and scaled up soccer ball, rendered in vinyl on aluminum. Crossing political, religious, economic and geographical boundaries, soccer is perhaps the world's most "common" pastime. (It is estimated that one in five people on the planet watched some part of the recent World Cup.) In addition to being culturally ubiquitous, the soccer ball is mathematically precise: its 32 facets form a truncated icosahedron, which is an Archimedean solid. Flattened into two dimensions, the form has similarities to a world map, and can be read as a metaphor for the global reach of sports and popular culture.

Guerrero-Maciá is best known for her hand-sewn text-based pieces, and the appropriation of familiar and found objects. In keeping with her interest in language, The Beautiful Game in Black and White contains an element of word play: where the soccer ball manufacturer's logo would be, she transforms the name 'Mitre' (a popular European brand) so it reads "Mirth," meaning joy or amusement. She also appliquès "32" onto the work's surface, as a player's number would be stitched onto a jersey, noting the coincidence between soccer ball geometry and the number of teams that advance to the World Cup finals.

Artist Bio
Born in Cleveland in 1966, Guerrero-Maciá received a BFA from Villanova University (1988) and an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art (1992). She has exhibited her work in numerous solo exhibitions including Words Make Wide Open Spaces, Bodybuilder and Sportsman Gallery, Chicago (2006); Artpace, San Antonio (2005); My First Painting, Twenty-One Years Later, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2003); and Perfect Lovers, Museum of Contemporary Art, St. Louis (2000).

Sponsorship
The World Is Round at MetroTech Center is part of an ongoing program organized by the Public Art Fund and sponsored by MetroTech Commons Associates, an organization that consists of MetroTech companies Bear Stearns & Company, Forest City Ratner Companies, JPMorganChase, KeySpan, and Polytechnic University.

Special thanks to Forest City Ratner Companies and First New York Partners.

Location
MetroTech Center is located in Downtown Brooklyn between Jay Street and Flatbush Avenue at Myrtle Avenue. Viewing hours are dawn to dusk daily for outdoor works, Monday through Friday 8am to 6pm for Jacob Dyrenforth's installation in the lobby of One MetroTech. Subway: A, C, F to Jay Street/Borough Hall, exit at Myrtle Promenade; R to Lawrence Street; Q to Dekalb Avenue.