Just over three years since NBA superstar Kobe Bryant tragically died in a helicopter crash on a Calabasas mountainside, his image is still remarkably embedded throughout Los Angeles. It’s writ large and colorfully in memorializing murals across the sprawling urban landscape. He will forever be associated the City of Angels and the Lakers, the beloved pro basketball team with which Bryant made his name.
There are dozens upon dozens if not hundreds of these Kobe Bryant memorial murals around the greater L.A. metro area. Each is a unique visual take by its creator celebrating Bryant. We came across one of these (pictured above) again recently at the corner of Genessee Avenue and fashionable Melrose Avenue in the Fairfax District of Hollywood.
The mural is by the Long Beach-based artist JC Ro. His mural shows Bryant floating through the air, a basketball tucked into his palm as he’s about to hook it into a dunk. Ro’s painting of Bryant is distinct in that it’s entirely composed of 413 triangles. At first glance it has a polygon-like graphics style of an old videogame or some artful CGI animation, except that instead of polygons, of course, there are triangular shards.
Text in the mural notes the date of Kobe’s last professional NBA game. That game was played on April 13, 2016 and it may go down as one of the greatest final acts in professional sporting history — Bryant scored 60 points for the Lakers in that match.
GLOBAL GRAPHICA 