21st Century PoP

A letter from the curator:

This exhibit is inspired by a series of conversations about art I have had with other artists over the years wherein we consider what genre our work would fall into. The phrase, "my work is post-postmodern II would spring forth from lips consistently, even when the world and the work had evolved to more of a post-post-post place. These artists, myself included were creating art that could not fully be described as made by the outsider looking in. As a curator, I could see we needed a new word for these artists, something like punk is to music and fashion, something that defined the seriousness, spiritually, reflectively and at the same time with its middle finger up. The art historian in me knew we already had this word and just need to continually reclaim its meaning in an art world.

20th century Pop art ushered in post-modernism with its reactive rejection to modernism. Now in the 21st century, as post-modernism ages vintage, PoP re-emerges. The post-modernist art that leads us into the 21st century with its irony and vagueness has becomes itself ironic. With irony no longer the main message in contemporary art, it is absorbed instead with a New PoP, something more soul searching and universal akin to much of what contemporary minimalism, abstraction or surrealism seek.

This exhibition highlights 21st century Pop Art outside of the context of its contemporary sibling’s minimalism, abstraction and surrealism, in its search for "something more". As when evaluated for its pop art preferentialism rather than its place in time/space as contemporary, we see 21st century PoP's "something more" resonating deeply with its Pop-Art forbearer, this time as a rejection to the irony or vagueness of post­modernism but with a clear resonance to Pop's definitive traits and a clear distinction from its contemporary counterparts more liminal interpretations. These 21st century Contemporary PoP artists, their methods of interpretation and production of art, and their stylistic and medium choices, are as diverse within the movement as the movement itself is distinctly other than its co-contemporary styles.