This publication presents de Rooij’s private collection of sportswear by Dutch designer Fong Leng.

Offering a focus on these supposedly trivial, mass-produced objects de Rooij creates groups of similar labels, colours and patterns that expose cross-references.

Thus it becomes apparent that many of the surfaces recur to techniques and patterns of a wide variety of cultural spheres, such as caucasian carpets or Navajo blankets. Others seem to address sports as part activity, part status symbol.

Some of the prints and applications recall North American quilts or the specific Adiretechnique known from Ghana. The outcome of this is a contemporary discourse of fashion, gender and identity as much as within the oeuvre of Willem de Rooij.

Published on the occasion of solo exhibitions of Willem de Rooij:
The Impassioned No, Le Consortium, Dijon, June 20 - September 27, 2015
Entitled, MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, October 14, 2016 - January 8, 2017

Texts:
"The Impassioned No" by Stéphanie Moisdon
"Small Phenomenology of the Tracksuit" by Philipp Ekardt
"Difference, Diversity, and Negation" by Manfred Hermes