SHANGHAI.- The Modern Art Museum is presenting “Neo Golden Age” from 8 November 2020 to 14 March 2021. The exhibition features British Neo-Pop artist Philip Colbert and Canadian street artist Trevor Andrew in the form of a “duo solo exhibition”.
Following their China debut exhibition, ‘Reset’, in 2018, the two artists will bring their largest ever solo exhibitions to Shanghai. This time they will use novel, engaging creative methods and media to open a dialogue between the artistic themes of “Lobster Land” and “The Real Big Deal”, organized by WAVELENGTH.
The “Neo Golden Age” exhibition uses a unique way of art presentation to impact contemporary pop culture and the consumerism world, depicting realistic scenes with exaggerated and unconventional installations, including an immersive experience.
In the 1980s, “the Father of Pop Art” Andy Warhol and street art icon Jean Michel Basquiat established a friendship in spite of their great difference in generation and style, which led to a creative blending of Pop Art and Street Art. The “Golden Age” in which this legendary friendship unfolded is a microcosm of the anti-traditional art movement that explored the relationship between pop culture, social sentiment and art. It also created an intellectual inspiration for artists of later generations. Philip Colbert and Trevor Andrew have inherited their anti-traditional artistic spirit, and present new attitudes and definitions of contemporary art through diverse, multi disciplinary, and unconventional art practices. At MAM they will inaugurate the “Neo Golden Age” of Pop Art and Street Art.
“Philip Colbert and Trevor Andrew diverge from traditional art forms and enter a world of multifaceted cultural production,” says MAM’s Artistic Director Shai Baitel. “Both turn their artistic personas into well-rounded and recognizable brands while simultaneously tackling society’s transitory nature. Today a strong artistic identity that can be easily identified by a unique set of visual motifs is considered essential in order to fit the immediacy and impatience of cultural consumerism. Using the principles of “traditional” Pop Art as the vehicle for their practice, fueled by their personal experiences and styles, both of these iconic artists are helped to acclimate 1950’s Pop Art into today’s social media frenzied and brand crazed world.”
Philip Colbert: Lobster Land
Described as the “Godson of Andy Warhol”, Philip Colbert is a representative of contemporary Neo-Pop art. Deeply entwined with pop theory, Colbert works across the mediums of painting, sculpture, clothing, furniture & design. For Philip Colbert, “Lobster” is not only a classic symbol in art history, but also his “alter ego” and “the animated protagonist of surrealism” in his artistic practice. Colbert integrates the rich art history influences into the fragments of contemporary daily life, and transforms them into scenes of his surrealism Neo-Pop world, “Lobster Land”, a large-scale visual art experience and his largest ever solo exhibition. According to Colbert, the rich resources of art history have created a language, painting is a communication tool, and only the unconscious, surreal world can get rid of all reality constraints. Life itself is the ultimate essence of art. In this utopian lobster world, the audience will become Lobster Land residents, and the boundary between reality and virtuality will be dissolved with immersive sensual experience.
Trevor Andrew: The Real Big Deal
Trevor Andrew is an iconic figure of contemporary graffiti art, but this identity definitely cannot fully represent his legendary career. In addition to that, Andrew is also an Olympic athlete, a musician, the lead singer of a band, a cartoonist, the owner of a street fashion brand, and “Gucci Ghost”, a collaborated artist of Gucci. His long-term multi-disciplinary art practice has given Andrew a unique artistic perspective and a distinctive creative language. Traditional art media never limit the creativity of Trevor Andrew, as he turns daily items and even garbage into his creative subjects. The retrospective show “The Real Big Deal” is Trevor Andrew’s first large-scale solo exhibition, which not only presents huge daily object installations with exaggerated sizes, but also pays tribute to the classic scenes of his artist career. “I have been creating all my life. This kind of creation is exaggerated and irrational, but it is also the most real motivation for all my art,” said Trevor Andrew. In this exhibition, the energy taken from daily life could also become a “Real Big Deal” and inspire the audience to explore the value behind all things in the universe.
