International Friendly: Henry Rosenberg’s Celebration of Soccer

By: Susana Cabrera

Some exhibitions are easily forgotten. Others leave you with an immediate urge to write about them. On the eve of another World Cup, I encountered one of the latter on the fifth floor of a walk-up building on Canal Street in Soho. The climb itself felt like a kind of prelude to the experience. At the top, the gallery revealed itself in a distinctly New York fashion: an open kitchen integrated into the exhibition space immediately disrupted the formality that so often defines contemporary art galleries. It is here that Henry Rosenberg presents his latest body of work, a project that feels both unexpected and engaging.

Longevity Palette, Oil on canvas, 2026. Courtesy of the artist

The exhibition opens with a series of drawings on paper depicting football players. These works serve as an introduction to the colorful world that later unfolds across the paintings. From the outset, it is clear that Rosenberg has little interest in academic realism or faithful representations of the sport. His figures, rendered with loose lines and deliberate imperfections, seem driven by a spontaneous, almost childlike energy. Enthusiasm takes precedence over precision.

The paintings expand this world through a vibrant palette and a spirit of celebration. At first glance, some figures appear to reference recognizable national teams. A player dressed in blue carrying champagne and a baguette immediately evokes France, while other uniforms suggest specific countries or clubs. Yet Rosenberg is less interested in depicting specific teams than in drawing from the visual languages of football culture itself. References to Morocco, Senegal, South Korea, Algeria, Egypt, Uruguay, Turkey, and other footballing traditions appear throughout the exhibition, but remain suggestive rather than fixed, allowing viewers to bring their own associations to the images.

Home Advantage, Oil on Panel, 2026. Courtesy of the artist

Surrounding the players is an abundance of food, establishing immediate connections between football, hospitality, and communal life. Yet these paintings are less concerned with documenting particular cultures than with transforming them into symbolic narratives. Footballers appear not merely as athletes but as fishermen, farmers, hosts, cooks, and celebrants. Through these characters, Rosenberg creates imagined worlds where sport, labor, landscape, and food become inseparable.

Ancient Agrarian, Oil on Panel, 2026. Courtesy of the artist

Visually, these paintings belong to a lineage that extends beyond contemporary sports imagery. Their flattened spaces, compressed perspectives, and abundance of symbolic detail recall the logic of illustrated manuscripts and vernacular painting traditions, where narrative takes precedence over realism. Figures, objects, and landscapes coexist within a single pictorial field, allowing multiple stories and associations to unfold simultaneously.

The works occasionally evoke the flattened storytelling strategies of David Hockney, while also sharing affinities with contemporary figurative painters who reject naturalism in favor of expressive distortion, decorative pattern, and symbolic imagery. More broadly, Rosenberg draws from folk-art traditions in which characters function less as individuals than as archetypes within larger cultural stories.

Local Delicacies (Warrior’s Garden), Oil on Panel, 2026. Courtesy of the artist

Best known for his work in printmaking, Rosenberg ventures into painting here for the first time. Years spent studying in Rome, along with extensive travel throughout Europe, introduced him not only to the intensity of football fandom but also to the ways that passion is expressed around the dining table. In these works, food is not merely an iconographic accessory but a symbol of hospitality, gathering, and belonging.

Perhaps the exhibition’s greatest strength lies in its embrace of storytelling without becoming sentimental. While football provides the point of departure, the paintings quickly move beyond sport into a broader realm of shared rituals, local traditions, and communal life. Their humor and exuberance prevent the symbolism from becoming heavy-handed, allowing the works to remain accessible while retaining their narrative richness.

Dim Sum Set Piece, Gouache and acrylic on paper, 2026. Courtesy of the artist

The bright colors inevitably recall the flags of the world and the collective excitement that football inspires, yet they do so with a sense of humor. Exaggerated proportions, flattened spaces, and dreamlike situations create an atmosphere of infectious joy. Rosenberg embraces a deliberately direct visual language that owes more to folk traditions and narrative painting than to academic realism, allowing the works to communicate through symbolism, character, and anecdote.

At a moment when contemporary art often privileges theory and concept, Rosenberg’s paintings foreground narrative, symbolism, and shared experience. Football appears here not merely as a sporting spectacle but as a cultural language through which stories of place, tradition, and community can be told. In a city like New York—which becomes a meeting point for fans from every corner of the globe during the World Cup—a visit to this exhibition feels like a fitting complement to the festive atmosphere that spills through the city’s streets, bars, and screens.

Leaving the gallery, one is left with the feeling of having participated in a visual feast. Rosenberg is an artist worth watching, as his first forays into painting reveal a playful, distinctive visual language drawing on folk painting, narrative imagery, and symbolic storytelling rather than realism. His footballers are not merely players but storytellers, hosts, workers, and celebrants—figures through whom traditions, landscapes, and communal rituals become vivid visual narratives. Painting becomes a space in which food, labor, celebration, and cultural memory converge, with football as the thread that binds them, until art, food, and sport ultimately gather at the same table.