Australian Doubles

Bill Sullivan

Charles Johnstone

Vicente Munoz

April 18 - May 24, 2025

PORTAL 5 is excited to present Australian Doubles, a three-person exhibition playing with visual concepts of court and tennis-related games. The exhibition features works by Bill Sullivan, Charles Johnstone, and Vicente Muñoz—three artists who have explored tennis and court-related themes extensively in their work.

The exhibition extends a visual dialogue first established by Johnstone and Sullivan in their 2022 book COURT 1520–2020, now introducing Muñoz into the conversation. A copy of the COURT book box sits at the center of the gallery, accompanied by related publications, works, and print ephemera featured in the book—including two large images from a vintage tabloid newspaper, originally published in Sullivan’s book Forest Hills. This two-volume set offers an extensive retrospective of the artists’ explorations of tennis and court themes in various media over the past decade. Similarly, the exhibition presents a wide array of works—painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, and publications.

Johnstone showcases photographs from three distinct bodies of work: two prints from his now-iconic series on New York handball courts, two from a project documenting a rare outdoor steel squash court in Maspeth, Queens, and four images from his latest book Basque Courts (S U N, 2024). These photographs, taken in the Basque region of France, capture the distinctive trinquet courts—an idiosyncratic and historical court style found throughout towns and cities in both the French and Spanish Basque regions. The series resulted from a two-year pilgrimage by Johnstone to locate and photograph these unique courts, which represent a unique architectural divergence from traditional court tennis courts.

Sullivan presents works from three series, all featured in the COURT book. For this exhibition, he has painted three new versions of his "mouse tennis court" paintings. The mouse-like characters in these works echo the style of early American cartoons—from the Fleischer Brothers to Krazy Kat to Disney. The cartoon figures, seen playing tennis, are painted against abstract backgrounds in tones of rust and gold, drawn from the work of painter John McLaughlin, evoking a sense of a bygone era.

He also presents two series of abstract court works created with ink, paint, and wax on canvas mounted to wood panels. The first series, based on the lines and structure of lawn tennis courts, continues a body of work he’s been developing for several years. These pieces are arranged in a kind of Russian doll sequence, progressing from smaller to larger works. The second series is based on the line formations of court tennis courts. These works are set in handmade artist frames inspired by classic Constructivist and De Stijl frame designs from the early 20th century. They read like Renaissance abstractions, using lines and geometry from courts over 500 years old to create pieces that move between modernist and early Renaissance sensibilities.

Vicente Muñoz presents his lyrical, bright yellow painted tennis ball sculptures—part of his ongoing exploration into the graphic and typographic language of tennis balls, both common and obscure. “I’ve been fascinated by the tennis ball as a relatively unchanged object for the last 100 or so years,” Muñoz says. “The stylistic and typographical elements are what have changed the most. I enjoy collecting them, knowing they’ll become more special and nostalgic over time.” His sculptures visually divide the gallery space into smaller viewing zones. He also presents a large infrared photograph, where the red clay of a tennis court contrasts with the fiery pinks of an infrared tree. Additionally, Muñoz shows two sets of recent cyanotypes, created using tennis rackets, balls, and strings.

Australian Doubles is on view at PORTAL 5 through May 24.