LOS ANGELES, CA.- The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents Fútbol Is Life: Animated Sportraits by Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr. Celebrating the arrival of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Los Angeles this summer, the exhibition spotlights “sportraits” by award‑winning animator and visual effects artist Lyndon J. Barrois, Sr., many of which have never been shown publicly. Fútbol Is Life highlights the global culture of soccer through the uniquely personal perspective of an artist who has been modeling figures since childhood.
Barrois materializes unforgettable moments from the histories of women’s and men’s soccer using one-inch-high sculptures made primarily from chewing gum wrappers, strengthened with glue and meticulously painted in detail. The tiny figures, arranged in vignettes, are extraordinarily expressive, magnifying the game’s physical grace, emotional power, and cultural impact. In many cases, Barrois also brings the figures to life with stop-motion animation, to recreate their particular moments in time, which he shoots and edits on iPhones.
Fútbol Is Life brings together 60 of Barrois’s works. This includes more than 40 new vignettes drawn from World Cup matches spanning 95 years; renderings of L.A. stars Son Heung-Min (LAFC), Christen Press (formerly of Angel City FC), and Riqui Puig (LA Galaxy); and the artist’s 2018 sculptural installation and accompanying short film, Fútballet, which unites 21 iconic scenes on a 50-inch soccer pitch. On view at LACMA for the first time since its recent acquisition, Fútballet is presented alongside photographs by Harold Edgerton and Eadweard Muybridge from the museum’s permanent collection that contextualize the history of motion studies and time-lapse photography. Fútbol Is Life also features life-size sculptures of Marta and Lionel Messi, behind-the-scenes footage from Barrois’s studio, and examples of the artist’s earlier projects exploring horse racing and American football.
The exhibition is curated by Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Prints and Drawings Department at LACMA, with curatorial assistant Christianne Hanych.
Sports and Art at LACMA
Fútbol is Life is an example of LACMA’s commitment to cross-disciplinary practices that traverse art and athletics. LACMA’s exhibition Fútbol: The Beautiful Game coincided with the 2014 World Cup and explored soccer through the works of nearly 30 artists, bringing together ideas of nationalism, identity, globalism, and shared human experience from a range of cultures.
As Los Angeles prepares to host both the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics, the Aspen Institute Sports & Society Program and LACMA recently announced the launch of a new event series, Why We Play: Sport, Art, and the Making of Modern Life. The 18-month program will feature prominent athletes, artists, authors, and others speaking in various formats, from candid off-the-record roundtables to public panel discussions. Insights from these conversations will shape a major LACMA exhibition, to be presented ahead of and during the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Lyndon J. Barrois Sr. is an artist and filmmaker known for his innovative work in stop- motion animation and visual effects. Born and raised in New Orleans, he began fashioning figures from chewing-gum wrappers at a young age and later studied graphic design, film, and video, earning a BFA at Xavier University in New Orleans and an MFA at CalArts. His work addresses a wide range of themes, from gender inclusion and excellence in the FIFA World Cup and Olympics to America’s Covid-19 crisis, from past racial uprisings and achievements to current political and social climates. His artworks have been featured in major institutions like the Hammer Museum; LACMA; MASS MoCA; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Pérez Art Museum Miami, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the SR Foundation in Seoul, Korea.
