Visit virtual art exhibition here:

https://www.bougiegallery.com/pop-art-exhibition

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"Pop Art looks out into the world. It doesn't look like a painting of something, it looks like the thing itself." - Roy Lichtenstein

While the Pop Art movement started in the 1950s in Great Britain and sought to explore popular culture and make art more affordable, today, Pop Art has a different approach. While the affordability is still there, the themes from American pop culture (westerns, fiction, and so on) jumped into more vast choices. Pop Art now is questioning the movement's founding fathers, including the interpretations of their works. This art movement is starting to approach itself much more than reflect consumerism, commercials, and massive production.

Pop Art has many faces, many different ideas behind it. However, one visual aspect is joining all these differences - art pieces are popping out with their bold color palette, the zoomed-in approach of various images, and commercial-like perspective.

For this virtual art exhibition, we want to see how Pop Art evolved, how it changed and where it is going. We asked so many questions: Is it still a mirror of contemporary society? Is it more than images of celebrities and fictional comic book characters? Are we lost in the Marily Monroe and Disney images? Is Pop Art still blurring the boundaries between "high" art and "low" culture? Or did it become high culture?

Thirty artists were selected to answer these questions and to show their understanding and different approaches to Pop Art.

Gerald Curtin, Toshy, Liz F. Callahan, Nimisha Doongarwal, Catherine Comtois, Kristen Wierman, Sussane Meier zu Eissen-Rau, and Patrick Parker show how Pop Art can be a mirror of our contemporary society.

Duology, François Poulat, Piero Casarin, Michael Kaza, Kaori Sakaguchi, Robert Carlton Crawford II, Jen Gilroy, and Howie Green expand the themes of Pop Art into much more than images of celebrities and offer another glance into the Pop Art theme pallet.

Galya Kerns, Antonio Vargas, Michael Kwong, Forman Act, Michael Hartfelder, and Captain Hooter are choosing to show more complicated themes through Pop Art - from political criticism to the fragile boundaries of religion-related art. They show that this art genre blurs lines between "high" art and "low" culture.

Hide Hayashi, Miranda Chao, Lollie Ortiz, Andrew Wulf, Damiano Fasso, David Isakson, Susan de Vanny, and Barbara Danzi show different approaches to Pop Art. Through sculpture, quilting, assemblages, unique software, and other mixed media techniques.

All these talented artists are telling the Pop Art story of today.

This exhibition is heavy on content and rich with its graphics. Themes vary from comic book inspirations to political criticism. Pop Art itself in this exhibition shows so many faces - Minimal Pop Art, Pop Art with abstract art approach and Naive art touch; less mirroring of consumerism, and more exposing today's socio-political problems.

Welcome to the journey of Pop Art.

- Founder of Bougie Art Gallery

Neringa Mikol