Johnny Romeo DEADWOOD Opening Night @ NG Art Gallery, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia.
August 13th – September 21st 2013.
Johnny Romeo’s DEADWOOD Opening Night @ NG Art Gallery, Sydney. DEADWOOD Exhibition: 13th August – 21st September 2013 – www.ngart.com.au
Johnny Romeo featured in today’s the Sun-Gazett, Williamsport, Pennsylvania, August 8th 2013, pages 8 & 9.
Johnny Romeo featured in SCENESTR OF THE DAY – Scenestr.
Read the interview –http://www.scenestr.com.au/lifestyle/sod/Johnny-romeo-scenestr-of-the-day
Johnny Romeo: I CAN DREAM, I CAN BREATHE, HELTER SKELTER
I Can Dream, I Can Breathe, Helter Skelter is the latest work from internationally renowned Australian artist Johnny Romeo. Commissioned by Mission Restaurant, Chippendale, I Can Dream… is an expansive, 6 metre triptych that showcases Romeo’s signature Neo-Expressionist Pop musings, with a Cubist twist. Off the back of a recently sold out show in Pennsylvania, Johnny Romeo has delivered a bold and brash celebration of the restless creative drive to innovate and forever move forward. Paying homage to Pablo Picasso’s Les Baigneusses (The Bathers) (1918), I Can Dream… bursts at the seams with glorious explosions of colour, humour and a rich, rhythmic linear aesthetic that evokes the ebb and flow of jazz and beat poetry.
Johnny Romeo’s I CAN DREAM, I CAN BREATHE, HELTER SKELTER triptych will be unveiled at the opening of his show DEADWOOD @ NG Art Gallery, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia. Opening Tuesday 13th August 2013 – 6-8pm – www.ngart.com.au
Johnny Romeo: I CAN DREAM, I CAN BREATHE, HELTER SKELTER
Johnny Romeo’s I Can Dream, I Can Breathe, Helter Skelter, is a celebration of the restless creative drive to innovate and forever move forward. A special release commissioned by Mission Restaurant, Chippendale, I Can Dream… is a breathtaking triptych spanning 6 metres. Paying homage to his hero Pablo Picasso, these three works are exuberant slices of Neo-expressionist Pop mastery that evoke the spirit of Picasso’s Les Baigneusses (The Bathers) (1918). Johnny Romeo aspires to carry the torch of Picasso, the Great Modernist painter, by pushing the boundaries of his own works into a realm that he has irreverently dubbed ‘so-so modern’.
I Can Dream, I Can Breathe, Helter Skelter pulsates with an insatiable rhythmic quality, evoking not only the Cubist tradition of Picasso but also the exhilarating cadence of beat poetry or free jazz. Looking at Picasso’s Les Baigneusses (The Bathers) (1918), it has been noted that ‘in a setting that demands leisure and comfort, the three women are contorted and precarious.’ Echoing the Cubism of Picasso, Romeo’s bathers are richly rounded and disjointed, with Romeo’s rich line-work connoting a sense of movement that is at once spontaneous and harmonious.
The interplay between the sumptuous abstractions of the female figures, the kitschy figuration of childhood and Romeo’s clever use of Pop-savvy text evokes the ebb and flow of movements in a free-spirited jazz piece. Like a musician using fragments of lyrics and melodies as a springboard for compositions, Romeo adopts the rhythmic thrust of poetry and song to create a potent sense of momentum in his works.
Far from leisurely, the sharp shots of colour that comprise the female form in works like Ditty Kitty School are brilliant and vivacious, smouldering with a barely contained energy. With his love of lively colour arrangements in full flight, Romeo has drawn inspiration from the scintillating, hyper-coloured fantasy worlds of latter-day Tim Burton productions and the acid-neon of Old Detroit and Chicago Techno. Romeo skilfully juxtaposes the taut colour palette of the bathers with expressive swathes of garish hues that bleed in to each other in the background. In doing so, Romeo conjures the searing moments of clarity amidst the malaise of perpetual motion – dreaming and breathing amidst the helter skelter of modernity.
The usage of childhood motifs in Romeo’s triptych imbues the works with a playful, humorous bent. On a deeper level, however, these symbols allude to the boundless potential of childhood imagination as a visual allegory for the pursuit of innovation and forward motion. In Song Slope Sonata, for example, Romeo depicts wind-up ducks skittering across the canvas. A cheeky play on Florentijn Hofman’s giant Rubber Duck that sat in Sydney’s Darling Harbour earlier this year, Romeo’s ducks are constantly moving forwards and onwards, pushing against the confines of the canvas.
I Can Dream, I Can Breathe, Helter Skelter sees Johnny Romeo pay tribute to his personal hero, ingeniously grafting the Cubism of Picasso with his own exuberant brand of neo-Expressionist Pop bombast. The triptych bursts at the seams with glorious explosions of colour and a rich, rhythmic linear aesthetic that evokes the ebb and flow of jazz and beat poetry. Brimming with life and urgency, the series is a spirited celebration of our capacity to dream, to breathe and find meaning amidst the helter skelter of contemporary life.
Deadwood, the latest show from internationally acclaimed Australian artist Johnny Romeo is a visual tour de force of bombastic neo-Expressionist Pop. Deadwood sees Johnny Romeo craft his most glorious series of Pop paintings yet. Evoking the spirit of Andy Warhol and urban street-art at its most brazen, Romeo’s portraits of bygone Hollywood stars are potent visual statements. A glorious romp through celebrity nostalgia and the seamy underbelly of pop culture, Romeo masterfully combines the humour of kitsch, the energy of rock’n’roll and the urgency of urban street art into a truly incendiary paean to Hollywood in all its neon-drenched, trashy glory.
Johnny Romeo’s DEADWOOD @ NG Art Gallery, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia opens Tuesday 13th August 2013 – 6-8pm – www.ngart.com.au
DEADWOOD will be opened by Visual Arts Writer for The Daily Telegraph Elizabeth Fortesque.
Any enquires concerning DEADWOOD can be made directly through NG Art Gallery (ng@ngart.com.au) or by calling the gallery on +61 9 318 2992.
Johnny Romeo’s much anticipated Sydney show DEADWOOD opens @ NG Art Gallery, Chippendale, Sydney. August 13th – September 21st, 2013.
Opening Night: Tuesday 13th August, 2013 @ 6-8pm
DEADWOOD will be opened by Visual Arts Writer for The Daily Telegraph Elizabeth Fortesque.
DEADWOOD, the latest series from internationally acclaimed artist Johnny Romeo, is one of the most anticipated shows of 2013. A glorious romp through celebrity nostalgia and the seamy underbelly of pop culture, the series a truly incendiary paean to Hollywood in all its neon-drenched, trashy glory.
Johnny Romeo is leading the global charge of Neo-Expressionist Pop art. Described by GQ Magazine Australia as ‘part punk, part pop’, Romeo’s colourful collision of rock’n’roll swagger, comic book aesthetics, Neo-Expressionism and street art has been turning heads worldwide. Following a collaboration with globally renowned punk band Blink 182 earlier this year, Romeo has received rave reviews from major shows in New York and Los Angeles and a sold out show in Pennsylvania. Romeo’s collectors include major Hollywood stars such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert Gossett and many others.
Any enquires concerning DEADWOOD can be made directly through NG Art Gallery (ng@ngart.com.au) or by calling the gallery on +61 9 318 2992.
A vectorised Johnny Romeo artwork featured on the Broadway store window at Kadmium Art & Design Supplies, Sydney, Australia.
Johnny Romeo joins Penny Contemporary, Hobart, Tasmania – www.pennycontemporary.com.au