Pop culture is everywhere, in every kind of art. But why is it so good?... Because it’s directly appealing to positive emotions we received when we were children. It brings us to a comfort area where we feel safe, relaxed and happy. So when two great artists appropriate pop culture and merge it with more traditional art forms, we can only fall under the spell!
The two artists we decided to focus on are the painter Xavier Marabout and the sculptor Mancardi² sculptors.
Very famous for his series Edward Hopper x Hergé (with Tintin character), Xavier Marabout is an expert to merge pop culture icons with great painting masters. He has the talent to find universes that fit each other and manages to merge them in comic scenes full of references. Tex Avery x Picasso, Toons x Delacroix, Batman x Gustav Klimt... he takes us into a colorful and full of life world.
Mancardi² spent a big part of his artist life studying and creating traditional forms of arts. He painted figurative works, he sculpted marble stones and he created figurative bronze sculptures. All these experiences led him to create a new series by mixing pop culture, urban style and authentic bronze work. In this original series, Mancardi² pays tribute to street artists while tagging urban constructions. With a human approach, colorful and full of references, he reinvents the work of bronze to highlight ordinary people in attitudes deep of realism.
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