Johnny Romeo
POP LIFE
New Paintings
POP LIFE is the electrifying new series from internationally acclaimed Australian Pop painter Johnny Romeo. Following on from successful shows in New York and Pennsylvania earlier this year, Romeo returns with a truly knockout collection of new paintings that offer a refreshing and innovative take on his inimitable style. Brimming with unbridled energy and slick, candy-coloured savviness, POP LIFE is a Technicolor tour de force from Australian Pop royalty that sees Romeo at the forefront of the global Neo-Expressionist Pop movement.
POP LIFE is classic Johnny Romeo played with the volume turned well up to eleven. Full of kaleidoscopic hues and thick, commanding lines, Romeo’s latest works sizzle with undeniable attitude and visual swagger. The consummate Postmodern sampler, the larger-than-life appropriations of cultural icons featured in the series span from personal artistic heroes like Basquiat and Picasso, to gun-slinging bodacious babes and rollicking renditions of Ned Kelly. Romeo’s wildly eclectic slices of subversive Pop iconography act as colourful celebrations of the cultural images that populate the Pop Metropolis that is modern life.
The use of word play and text assemblages has long played a central role in Romeo’s works. POP LIFE, however, marks a shift away from words in Romeo’s usual visual vocabulary, while maintaining the visual chutzpah and glorious colour explosions that we have come to expect from Johnny Romeo. The conscious decision to eschew text has enabled Romeo to experiment with more innovative compositions while allowing his depictions of Pop icons to really speak for themselves.
Dynamic and in-your-face, Romeo’s portraiture delves deep into the pervasive power of iconography in Pop culture. This is exemplified in ‘Easy’, Romeo’s bombastic homage to classic NWA member Eazy E. With its slick, pastel hues and rich, shadowy visage, Romeo’s Eazy E exudes a staggering visual presence that evokes the gritty punchiness of street art and hardcore hip-hop, but with a Pop-inflected sheen.
Romeo’s latest series sees the artist ingeniously challenge the boundaries of the canvas space. ‘Swisher’ depicts a neo-futurist Ned Kelly cutting through the pictorial plane with manic energy, his pistol prodding at the forefront of the image as his outstretched hand threatens to tear at the very fabric of the canvas. With their bold, exaggerated poses and taut, muscular figures, many of POP LIFE’s anti-heroes and femme fatales are rambunctious and primal in equal measure, elevating Romeo’s penchant for graphic gusto and comic book aesthetics to dizzying new heights.
In his enthralling new series, Johnny Romeo fully embraces the irrepressible energy of Pop icons, eschewing his penchant for text assemblages while maximizing the Technicolor bombast and boldness of his paintings. POP LIFE sees Romeo at the top of his game, offering audiences a neon-drenched world of superheroes, folk legends, and rap royalty – where Pop is king, where Pop is life.
Opening Night: Saturday 21st November, 2015 @ 6-8pm.
19 Karen | 19 Karen Avenue, Mermaid Beach QLD, Australia | www.19karen.com.au
Any enquiries regarding POP LIFE can be made directly through 19 Karen Gallery (info@19karen.com.au) or by calling the gallery on +61 7 5554 5019.
Exhibition Dates: November 21st, 2015 – January 6th, 2016.
Johnny Romeo
TV LAND
Converge Gallery
TV LAND is the latest mixed print and painting collection from internationally acclaimed Australian artist Johnny Romeo. Made up of 40 classic Johnny Romeo prints and four new original paintings, the series offers audiences an exhilarating insight into the electrifying works of Australia’s leading Pop artist. The opening night of the series also sees the official launch of the exhibition companion book, TV LAND; a visual compilation of Romeo’s works featuring written contributions from John-Ernest Dinamarca, and notable art writer and artist Matthew Rose. Celebrated the world over for his inimitable Neo-Expressionist Pop style, the works featured in TV LAND reveal Romeo at his most captivatingly colorful, culturally savvy, and visually bombastic.
Growing up during the glory days of Saturday morning cartoons, daytime soap operas and MTV, Johnny Romeo has often spoken of his desire to be a kind of television through his art making practice. The works featured in TV LAND, with their tongue-in-cheek appropriations of television icons, irrepressible punk energy, and psychedelic color explosions, powerfully capture Romeo’s undeniable knack for transforming his paintings into larger-than-life broadcasts of Pop culture.
Often described as a ‘Postmodern sampler’, Johnny Romeo’s works cheekily draw from the full spectrum of Pop culture. Superheroes and cult fiction villains such as Superman, Cat Woman and Darth Vader rub shoulders with classic silver-screen stars and musical martyrs in Romeo’s engrossing, neon-drenched visual TV LAND. Playing with the audience’s sense of nostalgia, Romeo cleverly harnesses the interplay between graffiti-like text and imagery in his paintings to subvert our relationship with popular television icons like Felix the Housecat (Grind, 2014).
Much like the intoxicating fields of color that flooded his television screen as a youth, the works featured in TV LAND are rife with vivaciously vibrant hues that reveal Romeo’s life-long fascination with color. A scintillating sugar-rush of summery, kaleidoscopic tones, Romeo’s use of color aims to evoke the same thrill experienced by Dorothy as she entered the magical Technicolor world of Oz. Works like Texas Grill (2015) and Super Line Back (2014), with their highly saturated, psychotropic fields of color, reflect Romeo’s fixation with television and its ability to transcend the hum-drum banality of ordinary life.
TV LAND, like the most innovative of television shows, ingeniously straddles the line between the accessible and the subversive, between the glossy veneer of TV and Pop culture’s seamier underbelly. Bursting at the seams with confectionary sweet color arrangements, irresistible Pop playfulness and grungy, graphic gusto, TV LAND delivers a knockout punch of Johnny Romeo classics that cements his place as the leading force in the global Neo-Expressionist Pop movement.
Opening night – Friday 18th September 2015 @ 6-9pm.
Converge Gallery | 140 W 4th Street, Williamsport, Pennsylvania, USA. | www.convergegallery.com
Any enquires regarding TV LAND can be made directly through Converge Gallery (john@convergegallery.com) or by calling the gallery on +1 570-435-7080.
Exhibition Dates:
September 18th – October 10th, 2015
Johnny Romeo | ANGRY BIRDS | New Paintings @ Porter Contemporary, Brooklyn, New York.
ANGRY BIRDS is the highly anticipated second New York exhibition from internationally acclaimed Australian Pop painter Johnny Romeo. A neon-drenched celebration of female empowerment, the show is a coruscating collision of comic book heroines, explosive colour arrangements and riotous energy from Australia’s leading Pop artist. Re-envisioning the comic book landscape as a Technicolour Gotham of bodacious bad-ass women, ANGRY BIRDS sees Romeo at the top of his game, spearheading the global Neo-Expressionist Pop movement with his most dynamic and exhilarating collection of powerhouse Pop works to date.
Opening Night – Thursday 10th September 2015 @ 6-8pm.
Porter Contemporary | 145 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, New York, USA | www.portercontemporary.com
Any enquires regarding ANGRY BIRDS can be made directly through Porter Contemporary (info@portercontemporary.com) or by calling the gallery on +1 212 696 7432.
Exhibition Dates:
September 10th – October 11th, 2015
Johnny Romeo
ANGRY BIRDS
New Paintings
Following his hugely successful New York debut, Grindhouse, ANGRY BIRDS is the highly anticipated second New York exhibition from internationally acclaimed Australian Pop painter Johnny Romeo. A neon-drenched celebration of female empowerment, the show is a coruscating collision of comic book heroines, explosive colour arrangements and riotous energy from the leading force in Australian Pop Art. ANGRY BIRDS sees Romeo at the forefront of the global Neo-Expressionist Pop movement, taking his distinctive style to glorious new heights with his powerful blend of graphic gusto and invigorating, in-your-face attitude.
Referencing the title of the hugely popular Apple app game of the same name, ANGRY BIRDS features brazen, liberated female superheroes that soar through the canvas with whiplash velocity. These pulp fiction Amazons are brave and unapologetically brazen, railing against the rigid gendered strictures of society with an unwavering confidence and an intoxicating taste for danger.
Comic book superheroes and villains have long played an integral role in Johnny Romeo’s paintings. In ANGRY BIRDS, Romeo draws on a rich cast of comic book vicious vixens, ranging from Cat Woman to Bat Girl. Cheekily subverting our often male-centric associations with superheroes, Romeo’s alluringly aggressive heroines re-envision the comic book landscape as a Technicolour Gotham of bodacious bad-ass women. The focus on masked super women hitting out against injustice also sees Romeo merge fiction with reality, recalling the balaclava-donning Russian Fem-punk activists Pussy Riot.
A fusion of Romeo’s love for comic book aesthetics with a deep fascination for Grindhouse cinema, ANGRY BIRDS is a Neo-Expressionist Pop powerhouse that masterfully straddles the line between seduction and ultra-violence. With their skin-tight latex costumes and exaggerated, acrobatic poses, the femme fatales captured by Romeo see the artist fully embracing the sensual curves of the female figure. Romeo’s potent use of text imbues his renditions of figures such as Super Girl with an undeniable swagger and self-assuredness. Phrases such as ‘lawless’ and ‘new age’ take on a declaratory nature, like lines screamed in a riot grrrl Feminist manifesto. The inherent confidence and white-knuckled fury captured through Romeo’s electrifying works draws attention to emboldened women who are in complete control of their bodies and negotiate their sexuality entirely on their own terms.
Like shots of pure adrenaline, the works in ANGRY BIRDS are thrilling tour de forces of sensual anarchy that represent some of Romeo’s strongest paintings to date. Painted with slick commanding lines and a palpable, physical intensity, the femme fatales captured by Romeo bristle with an insatiable sense of urgency and rebellion. Colours sputter and slash through the paintings with reckless abandon, a sultry combination of raw, bloodied backdrops and saccharine hues that teeter between the violent and the sweet. The series sees Romeo amp up the aggression and punk-rock energy of his work, experimenting with unorthodox angles to depict super heroines that threaten to rip through the very fabric of the canvas.
ANGRY BIRDS is righteously rollicking celebration of kick-ass women from Australia’s leading Pop artist. Triumphantly combining brash, expressive colour, frenetic yet sleek imagery, and punk rock attitude, the much-anticipated new series sees Romeo at the top of his game, delivering his most dynamic and exhilarating collection of Neo-Expressionist Pop works yet.
Opening night – Thursday 10th September, 2015 @ 6-8pm.
Porter Contemporary | 145 Plymouth Street, Brooklyn, New York, USA | www.portercontemporary.com
Any enquires regarding ANGRY BIRDS can be made directly through Porter Contemporary (info@portercontemporary.com) or by calling the gallery on +1 212 696 7432.
Exhibition Dates:
September 10th – October 11th, 2015
Internationally acclaimed Australian Pop painter Johnny Romeo comes roaring out of the gates with all guns blazing with his latest powerhouse work, ‘SO YOUNG / SO ANGRY.’ The knockout painting will be featured as part of the upcoming international group show ‘PAIN/TING’, being at the Open Walls Gallery in Berlin, in conjunction with 19 Karen Gallery. Showcasing the works of 20 contemporary artists from Australia and overseas, the exhibition explores the artist’s inner state and the notion of suffering for one’s art.
‘SO YOUNG / SO ANGRY’ sees Johnny Romeo channel the righteous angst and youthful dissent that characterised his early days as an artist. Delivering his signature comic book aesthetics with the sheer gusto and brute force of a heavyweight boxer, Romeo adopts an invigoratingly raw approach to his line-work to capture the spirit of anguish and defiance in his latest piece. Bringing his portrait right to the forefront of the canvass, Romeo has created a piece that actively confronts the audience, forcing them to take in the gnarled facial grimace, the piercing fiery eyes and the seething venom barely contained between gritted teeth.
Eschewing his usual penchant for text, Romeo allows the exhilarating ferocity of his portrait to speak for itself. Here, Johnny’ Romeo’s pithy pop witticisms is replaced with the invigorating urgency and violence of early basement hardcore shows; all sweaty, gnarled bodies, shredded vocals and empowering resistance.
Drawing from the rambunctiousness of classic puck and the irascible braggadocio of old-school hip, Romeo’s extreme close-up is unapologetic in its righteous fury. Influenced by the lyrics of hardcore rapper Ice Cube, ‘SO YOUNG / SO ANGRY’ is a brass-knuckled celebration of rebellion and creativity, and more notably rebellion as creativity. This is reinforced by Romeo’s gloriously Technicolour colour palette, whose saccharine pinks and citrus-bright oranges help to imbue the howling rage of his portrait with an almost adolescent ebullience.
Dripping with an unhinged, primal energy and a gloriously gritty, punk rock attitude, ‘SO YOUNG / SO ANGRY’ is Johnny Romeo at his most brazen, his most confrontational, and his most visceral.
Opening night – 1st August @ Open Walls Gallery, Berlin @ 6-9pm.
Any enquires regarding Johnny Romeo’s work can be made directly through 19Karen (info@19karen.com.au) or by calling the gallery on +61 7 5554 5019.
For more information – www.19karen.com.au | www.openwallsgallery.com
CROWN is the electrifying new addition to the World Sticker Series from internationally acclaimed Australian Pop painter Johnny Romeo. The street sticker hits the US, fresh off the heels of the first two hugely successful instalments in the World Sticker Series, which featured exhilaratingly colourful takes on Jimi Hendrix and the Kool Aid Man.
Filled to the brim with Romeo’s signature Neo-Expressionist Pop bombast and penchant for vibrant, Technicolour hues, the latest sticker is a glorious, neon-drenched celebration of America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln.
Romeo’s rollicking rendition of Lincoln aims to distil and reinterpret the essence of the much-loved leader, while re-envisioning him as an enduring, bona-fide icon of popular culture. Bold, playful and undeniably Pop, CROWN, the Lincoln sticker, promises to provide street audiences with a fresh new take on Abraham Lincoln with its intoxicating fusion of street art grit, psychedelic colours and classic American iconography.
Johnny Romeo | POPTOMETRY | Print Pop Up Show @ Hoff Optometry & Eyewear Venice, California, USA.
Opening Night: Saturday July 18th @ 6-9pm.
POPTOMETRY is the glorious new collaborative print pop up show by internationally acclaimed Australian Pop artist Johnny Romeo and renowned Californian optometrist Hoff Optometry & Eyewear. Filled to the brim with captivating colour arrangements, tongue in cheek humour and Romeo’s inimitable Neo-Expressionist Pop swagger, the print collection is an exhilarating celebration of all things Pop that showcases some of Romeo’s most iconic works.
Located on Venice Beach’s stylish Abbot Kinney Boulevard, Hoff Optometry & Eyewear is led by high profile optometrist Dr James Hoff. Committed to quality clinical services with a stylish flair, Hoff Optometry brings together the worlds of eyewear and cutting edge art and design to offer clients a truly unique experience.
The pop up print show comprises of 15 works expertly selected and curated by Dr Hoff, which span across Johnny Romeo’s highly celebrated career. A cheeky portmanteau of ‘pop’ and ‘optometry’, the title perfectly captures the playfulness and exuberance that lies at the heart of Romeo’s electrically charged Technicolour visions of Pop culture in all of its glory and excess.
POPTOMETRY is a visual feast for the senses that views the world through psychedelic, Pop-coloured lenses. Exploding with expressive swathes of sun-kissed colours, the prints conjure the liveliness and neon-saturated bustle of Venice Beach. The brilliant, confectionary sweet hues of works such as ‘Haze Gaze’ (2014) and ‘White Cello’ (2015), with their vibrant yellows and candied pinks, brings to mind summery, carefree jaunts through California.
A veritable Post-modern sampler, Johnny Romeo’s rambunctious and savvy works draw from the full spectrum of Pop culture. Musical luminaries, silver-screen celebrities, artistic heroes and brand name icons all share air-time in Romeo’s visual broadcasts, highlighting both the dynamic eclecticism that so strongly characterises the artist’s works and society’s fascination with Pop culture.
With his heady fusion of sleek iconography and gritty, stream-of-consciousness text, Romeo’s pithy verses evoke the pervasiveness of advertising slogans, as filtered through the hardened rhymes of rappers straight out of the urban jungles of LA. Romeo’s distinct approach to clever word arrangements also pay homage to Venice Beach’s history as a cultural hub for Beat Poets and creative types.
The collaboration of Johnny Romeo and Dr Hoff in POPTOMETRY sees a meeting of kindred spirits with a deep fascination for dazzling colour and stylish, bold imagery. The print show is a ballsy, luminous celebration of Pop in all its kitschy, neon-saturated glory that showcases Australia’s leading Pop artist at the top of his game.
Any enquires concerning Johnny Romeo’s POPTOMETRY can be made directly through Hoff Optometry & Eyewear on +1 310 452 4633 or by calling Paulina Castelli on +1 562-716-0149 or by email (paulina@prizeofvenicela.com).
OPENING NIGHT – NEW TOWN ROMANTICS group show @ Penny Contemporary in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
June 12th – July 8th 2015.
Any enquiries regarding NEW TOWN ROMANTICS can be made directly through Penny Contemporary (info@pennycontemporary.com.au) or by calling the gallery on 03 6231 5655 – www.pennycontemporary.com.au
NEW TOWN ROMANTICS Group Show curated by Johnny Romeo opens at Penny Contemporary in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
The exhibition will be opened by formal Tasmanian premier David Bartlett.
With BERNARD OLLIS, WENDY SHARPE & JOHNNY ROMEO in attendance, NEW TOWN ROMANTICS opens at 5:00pm on Friday 12th June at Penny Contemporary, 187 Liverpool Street, Hobart Tasmania.
The exhibition will run until 8th July 2015.
For any enquiries: info@pennycontemporary.com.au | www.pennycontemporary.com.au | +61 3 6231 5655
OPENING NIGHT – Johnny Romeo’s TOP OF THE POPS @ NG Art Gallery, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia.
May 28th – June 13th 2015
Any enquires regarding TOP OF THE POPS can be made directly through NG Art Gallery (ng@ngart.com.au) or by calling the gallery on +61 9 318 2992.