Johnny Romeo
COLOSSAL YOUTH
Paintings
Internationally acclaimed Australian Pop painter Johnny Romeo makes his thunderous return to Canberra with his latest retrospective, Colossal Youth. Expertly curated by Aarwun Gallery and Romeo, the survey is a dynamic collection of paintings taken from all over Australia and across the globe that provides an electrifying insight into the warped Technicolour visions of Australia’s King of Pop. In Romeo’s hyper-saturated Pop world, explosive bursts of candy-coloured hues collide with slick graphic imagery and Absurdist humour to create vivacious works that subvert our understanding of Pop culture icons and filters them through the artist’s distinctive Kitsch Pop lens.
Since erupting on to the Australian commercial art scene in the mid-2000s, Johnny Romeo has become one of the world’s leading voices in culture jamming and Pop Art, dazzling local and international audiences for over a decade with his bright, offbeat appropriations of Pop culture. Colossal Youth brings together a vibrant array of iconic works by Romeo that have been comprehensively hand-picked from Australian and international collections. Drawn mostly from the artist’s latter period, the paintings in the series capture Romeo at his most boisterous and unapologetically Pop as he skillfully melds together the slick, satirical bent of classic Pop Art with the psychedelic imagery of Surrealism. Each of the works highlight Romeo’s penchant for clever wordplay, pithy Pop culture references and his innate ability to contort Pop culture iconography into new and unexpected visons that speak to our experiences of living in a pure Pop reality.
Colossal Youth takes its name from the seminal 1983 album and title track of the same name by Welsh post-punk upstarts Young Marble Giants. Brimming with bright bubblegum colour arrangements and frenetic Pop imagery, the series perfectly encapsulates the spritely, synth driven music of Young Marble Giants while exploring Pop culture’s perpetual fascination with being forever young. There is a life-affirming sense of wide-eyed wonderment to the paintings which is reflected in Romeo’s imaginative fusion of sci-fi Surrealism, Cubist abstraction and quirky appropriations of celebrity iconography. Pop culture, for Romeo, is not just something we passively consume, but a vital channel through which we can transcend our everyday lives and reimagine the world with a renewed optimism that is only limited by our imagination. This sense of youthful possibility, of being a colossal youth, slyly evokes the Pop proclamations of 90’s boy band The Backstreet Boys with their insistent refrain of ‘every time we’re down / You can make it right / And that makes you larger than life.’
Evoking the spirit of Pop Art provocateurs such as Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol and Mel Ramos, Johnny Romeo boisterously toys with the celebrities and cartoon imagery of his childhood to offer colourful critiques of modern life that subvert our sense of the familiar. The jagged influence of Cubism in the artist’s work, in particular Picasso and the psychologically fraught works of George Condo, reflects the fragmented nature of modern life and the dizzying, kaleidoscopic experience of living in a world steeped in Pop culture. Surrealism also features prominently in the artist’s paintings as he blurs the lines between the everyday and the fantastical to confront the inherent absurdity of contemporary existence. Romeo masterfully synthesizes these influences into an intoxicating style that is undeniably his own, delivering visual Molotov cocktails that push Pop Art into thrilling new directions.
Colossal Youth is an electrifying retrospective that draws widely from Johnny Romeo’s illustrious career, offering audiences a neon-drenched glimpse into the mind of Australia’s leading culture jammer. Brimming with vivid colour explosions, larger-than-life Pop imagery, witty wordplay and a gleefully Absurdist sense of humour, Romeo’s Kitsch Pop works invite us to look beyond the humdrum banality of the ordinary, to dream big and embrace the colossal optimism of our youth.
Opening reception with Artist: Thursday 11th November 2021 | 6-8pm @ Aarwun Gallery
11 Federation Square, Gold Creek, Nicholls, ACT, Australia. Ph: +61 2 6230 2055.
Any enquires regarding Johnny Romeo’s COLOSSAL YOUTH can be made directly through Aarwun Gallery (aarwuncanberra@bigpond.com) or by calling the gallery on 61 2 6230 2055.
RSVP for Opening Night is essential.
RSVP to: aarwuncanberra@bigpond.com
Exhibition Dates: 11th November – 5th December 2021
November 13, 2021