Gallery 303. Echoes of Pop Art

In the 1960s, a new generation of artists in the US challenged the conventions of Abstract Expressionism, such as spontaneity and the emotion behind the creative gesture. Inspired by Marcel Duchamp and his concept of the readymade (the “found object”), Pop artists rejected the notion of originality in art and appropriated elements and images from consumer society —from commercial packaging to celebrity portraits and comic-strip scenes— transforming them into works of art. Among them were Andy Warhol, who blurred the artist’s personal touch by using mechanical reproduction processes such as silkscreen printing, and James Rosenquist, who applied the graphic strategies of billboards to his canvases, fragmenting and combining images to create monumental compositions.

Alongside Warhol and Rosenquist, this gallery also features other artists who, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, took up the legacy of Pop and carried it into a hyperconnected, media-driven era. Jean-Michel Basquiat incorporated symbols of urban subcultures and references to issues of identity and race in his creations, while Martin Kippenberger used humor as a central strategy to disrupt artistic conventions and, in some ways, obscure the meaning of his work. Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst likewise challenge the seriousness and sophistication of the art world by transforming ordinary objects into works of art. Erwin Wurm and Mike Kelley, in turn, appropriated everyday things and recontextualized or distorted them to question contemporary society and expose different forms of alienation tied to consumerism and its excesses. Tom Sachs brings humor and irony to his work by combining handcrafted production methods with references to luxury brands, subverting the perfection of the original object and challenging both the fetishism of consumption and the notion of authenticity.