Jeremy John Kaplan
Jeremy John Kaplan (b. Philadelphia, 1982; lives and works in New York) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice centers on public space as a site of collective endurance and durational commitment. Working across studio-based and socially engaged projects, Kaplan employs the language and infrastructure of basketball to examine interdependence, equity, and communal responsibility within both civic and institutional contexts.
Grounded in lived experience, Kaplan’s dedication to the basketball court as a social architecture shaped by repetition and cycle of effort and failure, make and miss. His work reframes common shared spaces as environments where endurance is practiced collectively, and where durational commitment becomes a form of care and community.
Central to his practice is The Gold Nets Project, an ongoing public intervention initiated in 2005, in which Kaplan installs gold basketball nets on community courts where nets are missing or in disrepair. With hundreds of installations realized internationally, the project foregrounds stewardship and action, positioning the basketball court as a vital safe space sustained through shared responsibility and collective play.
Kaplan is self taught, rooted in graffiti and forged through two plus decades of collaboration as organizer, producer, collaborator and arts worker. He formalized his studio practice by opening his Brooklyn studio in 2014. Kaplan’s work has been included in exhibitions at Frac Sud, Everson Museum of Art; The Hole Gallery and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York and Galerie La Banane in Cannes. Currently on view at Musées de Marseille until June 2026.
IG: @jeremyjohnkaplan
jeremyjohnkaplan.com goldnetsproject.com
Artworks
Project rendering for Rest in Tension, 2026
Rest in Tension reimagines the basketball court as a space for reorientation. The hoops are rotated perpendicular to deconstruct the adversarial nature of competition, turned toward a shared center to create a new framework for engagement. Two distinct goals; a classic gooseneck pole with scallop-shaped backboard and a square channel tube with rectangular backboard. From each hoop, nets extend and merge into a single woven suspended hammock. A shared space between the two goals. Utilizing weathered nets collected from neighboring public parks, the piece carries the embedded history of community play. By unifying these nets and reinforcing them into a load bearing form, Rest in Tension emphasizes interconnectivity, reciprocity, and shared support — an invitation for reflection, realignment, and reconsideration through interaction and play.