As if a Mondrian composition had been removed from the verticality of the canvas and laid out beneath the athletes’ feet, the tennis court organizes space through lines, intervals, and proportions. The pure formal elegance of these playing rectangles—stripped of the movement of bodies—emancipates tennis from its sporting significance, elevating it to a perfect composition: straight lines, fields of color, symmetries, and proportions that seem to engage naturally with the concept of minimalism. For this artist, originally from Santiago, Chile, who is drawn to the idea of reducing the image to its essential form, the tennis court rectangle presents itself as a virtually inexhaustible visual device. It is a space within which to study angles, shadows, trajectories, chromatic variations, and spatial tensions.

Overlaid on this visual appeal is also a biographical dimension in the tennis depicted by FIFA2000. South American memory, national identity, and cultural heritage are part of that emotional reservoir through which the tennis court, once absorbed into the artist’s universe, ceases to be a mere surface and transforms into a seemingly neutral space that, precisely because of its simplicity, ends up taking on ever-new social meanings.

You are a self-taught artist. Before there was a recognizable language surrounding your work, what prompted you to feel the need to draw and create images?

“My first serious foray into drawing was at age 12, when I discovered Japanese animation. Manga and anime blew my mind; it was a completely new universe for me. I went from watching classic Nickelodeon cartoons to becoming obsessed with Dragon Ball Z. That desire to replicate what I saw led me to convince my mother to enroll me in a drawing workshop, where I attended between the ages of 12 and 13. There I learned the techniques and had my first formal experiences with art, drawing manga pages like Evangelion, Alita, Battle Angel and Samurai X.”

Talking about the name ‘FIFA 2000’. Where did it come from and what did it represent to you when you chose it?

“FIFA 2000 was born from the search for a graffiti tag. I wanted a short name, legible anywhere in the world, and already ingrained in the collective consciousness. That’s how I came across FIFA, a brand with immense global power, and decided to borrow from that visual concept, also adopting the typography of another iconic brand like FILA. The ‘2000’ reflects my deep influence from the aesthetics of the turn of the millennium and all the psychosocial, futuristic, and nostalgic weight that era brought.”

You were born and developed your visual language in Santiago. How has the city taught you to observe geometry, public space, and social difference?

“Santiago is a capital city in constant motion, a city that reinvents itself physically and culturally every day. I’ve always been drawn to the streets; graffiti fascinated me from a very young age. I come from Puente Alto, a suburb where urban culture and the pulse of the streets are incredibly strong. What inspires me most about the city are the logos, brands, and advertising. At one point in my life, I hated them, but then I decided to turn them around and use them to my advantage to capture the viewer’s attention. Logos have an enormous visual impact on the human brain. Although the social difference in Santiago is extremely pronounced, logos are democratic: they’re present in both the wealthy neighborhoods and the poorest areas. I’ve always been interested in highlighting that universality.”

Do you think South America has its own visual language of tennis, one that hasn’t yet been fully represented? How much of Chile is reflected in your work even when the theme seems universal?

“Honestly, I don’t think South America has its own visual language for tennis, mainly because it’s a historically hegemonic and globalized sport, and Latin America tends to replicate that traditional aesthetic norm. However, local identity emerges when that pattern is broken. A key example for me was Marcelo “Chino” Ríos, a tennis player who went against all established conventions, exuding irreverence on and off the court. His personality in the 90s, when he became world number one, had a profound impact on me during my adolescence. That attitude is reflected in my work: I like to create attractive images that, at the same time, make the viewer uncomfortable or challenge them. That goes back to Chino Ríos as the pop icon of that era.”

Tennis has occupied a central place in your visual world for many years. Do you remember when you started seeing the game not just as a sport, but as a visual experience?

“I remember it perfectly because it coincided with the birth of my daughter. At that time, I was figuring out my path in art: I painted graffiti, did tattoos to make ends meet, and experimented on canvas, searching for a visual identity that would define me at first glance. In the midst of that search, I painted my first tennis court, with the unique feature that the players were Paralympians. Out of financial necessity, I began producing more works with this theme on t-shirts and canvases, and I realized that the public’s response was incredible. People bought the paintings to decorate their homes; they discovered that the geometry of the court looked very elegant in a living room, next to a plant or a pretty curtain. Seeing the commercial and aesthetic potential of this element, I never stopped. To this day, I still receive commissions for these compositions.”

Did tennis enter your work through a personal relationship with the game, through memory, television, the architecture of the court, or simply through visual fascination?

“I think there are three factors. The first is the visual fascination with the court itself; its design strikes me as highly artistic because it directly engages with minimalist art, something that courts with curved lines (like football or basketball courts) fail to convey. The second factor is a matter of memory and national identity: I was deeply affected by the achievement of Nicolás Massú and Fernando González at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games. The third factor, the most important, is the architecture of the court, which for me is synonymous with pure formal elegance.”

The art world has often relegated sport to a secondary cultural role, while popular culture immediately grasps the immense power of its imagery. What are your thoughts on the connection between these two worlds?

“I feel that in my generation of artists there’s a strong tendency to reclaim the aesthetics of sports, especially football. If the art establishment has historically relegated sports to the sidelines, it’s because these are inherently popular disciplines. Traditionally, the elite art circuit has sought exclusivity and restricted access, distancing itself from the masses. Sports break with that elitism because it belongs to the people, and connecting these two worlds is a way to democratize the image.”

At Tennista we like to think of tennis not just as a competition, but as an art form. What does tennis mean to you? What do you try to express in your art through tennis?

“In my work, tennis serves as a shield to project subtlety and elegance, two qualities that resonate deeply with my taste for clean, minimalist aesthetics. Unlike golf, I feel that tennis is a visually underexplored niche in contemporary art. Beyond the aesthetic, I embrace it as a lifestyle. The fact that it’s an individual sport perfectly reflects me; I’ve always hated team sports. Tennis is a battle of physical and mental precision that demands enormous sacrifice and constantly involves frustration, something that the recent Rafa Nadal documentary portrays very well. I use tennis to talk about that: about constant self-improvement, resilience, and the solitude of the creator facing their own canvas.”

Your work often explores geometric fantasies. What is it about tennis and geometry that sparks your creative process? And what did you see on a tennis court that you didn’t find anywhere else?

“When I was searching for my style, I wanted it to be as minimalist as possible. Ideally, the entire composition would be reduced to a single color, a line, and a circle. In that pursuit, I realized the tennis court was the perfect setting. My creative process begins there: finding the right colors, the correct angle, the ball’s trajectory, and the interplay of shadows. Furthermore, I noticed that tennis in art was a largely unexplored niche. There were artists who had painted a court at some point, but none who specialized in it. I wanted to seize that opportunity. Obviously, I don’t own anything, but I’ve dedicated a significant amount of time and created countless works painting tennis courts.”

Sometimes, tennis courts feel less like places where a match is played and more like mental spaces. Are you interested in the tennis court as a real place or as an imaginary landscape?

“I’m interested in both, but there came a point where I was so immersed in this world that I began to see the court more as an imaginary landscape. I became obsessed with finding ambiguous angles of completely random plays to create different paintings. I went so far as to abstract the space so much that the court ceased to be a physical place and became a state of mind, where lines and shapes floated outside the reality of the game.”

Tennis is one of the few sports whose visual identity can change almost completely depending on the surface: red clay, green grass, blue or green hard courts. Do you experience each surface color as a different emotional world?

“1000%. Each surface conveys something entirely different and varies greatly visually; the shadow cast by clay is not the same as that of grass, or that of cement versus asphalt. Rather than limiting myself to technical realities, I let myself be guided by chromatic freedom and the emotion of color. If a sky blue seems beautiful to me and conveys the right energy, I don’t hesitate to combine it with a Barbie pink to create my own world on the canvas.”

Tennis is experiencing a renewed cultural interest in fashion, photography, design, and art. Why do you think this is happening in this sport?

“I think it’s directly related to the elegance of its aesthetic. The visual components of tennis—the clothing, the brands, and even the attitude of the fans—have a very distinct identity. Although it’s a somewhat niche sport, that very secrecy works in its favor. Because it’s not a globally popular sport, it maintains an exclusive and sophisticated vibe that is very appealing to contemporary art and design.”

You’ve explored the format and scale of graffiti. What did graffiti bring you as an artist, and what changes when you work on a wall instead of a canvas?

“The format of graffiti is a completely different world from canvas or gallery paintings. The street offers a unique freedom that the studio simply can’t provide. I feel that my best works have been painted in public spaces, where the brushstrokes become looser and embrace the roughness of the urban texture. Furthermore, working on that scale injects a pure dose of adrenaline, a driving force I consider vital to the human experience and the creative process.”

After so many years back in tennis, what else can be discovered within the same rectangle?

“I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of 52% of the visual potential that tennis offers. The good thing is, projecting my career path, I have about four decades of life left to keep creating. That gives me the perfect amount of time to discover the remaining percentage through art. There are endless elements to explore: the interplay of shadows, the geometry of lines, the behavior of the crowd, the net, the shoes, the ball boys, the broken rackets, the sponsoring brands, the intensity of the managers, and the players’ mannerisms. There are a hundred more things hidden within that rectangle.”