Robert Mars
Solo Exhibition
CELEBUTANTS
March 8 – 25, 2024
YOICHIRO ANDO
YOICHIRO ANDO
Craig Alan
Solo Exhibition
Come Together
2024.1.19 Fri. - 2.7 Wed.
AND COLLECTION Contemporary Art is pleased to announce solo exhibition “CELEBUTANTS”, of Robert Mars at the gallery, from March 8, 2024.
Robert Mars draws inspiration from the celebrities and commercial art that symbolize the American popular culture that dominated the period of the 1950s and 1960s, and his works celebrate the existence of stars who were considered the darlings of the times and are unique and unforgettable myths. This exhibition features a number of new works focusing on mid-century popular culture, including movie stars and masterpieces of mechanical engineering that represent the golden age of American pop culture.
Robert Mars’ exploration of American art never stops, and in order to delve deeper into artistic expression, he sublimates his work into concepts rooted in Abstract Expressionism, which laid the foundation for contemporary art.
He uses folk art, which is deeply rooted in American culture, and combines vintage newspapers in several quilt patterns. With a flexible point of view, the artist incorporates pop art aesthetics and has established his own genre of folk-pop.A mixture of handwork and meditations on time, often overlooked folk art objects echo the backdrops used in his figurative body of work. The backgrounds are colored on vintage newsprint with slow and steady brushstrokes, sometimes emphasizing, sometimes erasing, the artist’s defiance of social structure and order. The vintage newsprint serves as a bridge to past events, anchoring the work in history. The dialogue of colors and the glimpses of events that emerge through these layers of colors weave a magnificent composition that seems to have been calculated.
In recent years, the ease of self-expression on the surface through social media has transformed us into an age where visual information is constantly broadcast to millions of people and instant fame is available to all. With the advent of the Internet, the mystique of the media has become relatively thin.Before these technologies, the careers of stars such as Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley were solidly shaped by key industry players such as executives at film production companies and producers of fashion shows and television programs. And the fact that the existence of deified stars continues to influence not only contemporary American culture but also the global market is still apparent today.
The nostalgia of the good old days will not fade away, but its contours will change colorfully with the passing of time, leading viewers to new values.
- Robert Mars Solo Exhibition ” CELEBUTANTS “
- Venue : AND COLLECTION Contemporary Art (Located at B2F Omotesando Hills）
- Exhibition period：March 8th(Fri.)-25th (Mon.),2024
Robert Mars
He is an American artist working in New York who explores luxury and prestige through the use of collage.Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg influence him. Mars humorously combines pop icons from the past with printed matter, paint, and fluorescent tubes. He creates a base of several layers of brown paper on the canvas’s surface, molds the outline, and paints a colored background. Then, he alternates between paints and old magazine scraps, scraping off some of the layers to manipulate the images and adding resin and neon to evoke a vintage quality.He said: “I wanted to keep alive the things that really made an impact in the 50s and 60s and still have relevance today.
Mars has been active in the world with many famous people (and companies) as collectors, including Ronald McDonald, Coca-Cola, Neiman Marcus, Bank of America, Adidas, NIKE, and many others.