Belonging and emotional connection are central themes in Filipino-American painter Mikey Yates’s work. His portraits of family, friends, and places of sentimental value are at once both deeply personal and universally relatable. They portray seemingly mundane yet cherished snapshots of repose and recreation.

‘Hoop Dreams’ (2018) was Yates’s first large-scale painting, celebrating his long-standing love for basketball. Yates offers us a candid glimpse of his bedroom, where the adolescent artist reclines on his bedroom and idly tosses and catches a ball in the air in a practised motion, dreaming of one day playing in the NBA. On the wall behind, we see a carefully arranged display of tear-sheet posters from Slam magazine – a nesting ritual he developed when settling in a new place. A ray of light streaks across the textured wall and this rudimentary hall of fame, illuminating the sports stars frozen mid-action in their moments of glory. Many may relate to this tactic for building a safe space; a sanctuary for the anxiety and worries of modern life. In presenting us his own, Yates welcomes us to reflect on the impact that the people and places have on us, and what it really means to feel at home.

For his first ever print release, Yates has chosen to replicate the original painting as closely as possible in a detailed hybrid archival pigment print. Additional spot varnishes and screen-printed finishes pull focus towards narrative elements of the composition, such as the slight sheen of the magazine posters and the tacky patterned surface of the basketball – frozen and glistening mid-air – in turn bringing the dream to life.