The Saatchi Gallery and the Tsukanov Family Foundation Present POST POP: EAST MEETS WEST, 11/26-2/23
By: BWW News Desk Mar. 11, 2014
In November 2014, the Saatchi Gallery and the Tsukanov Family Foundation will present Post Pop: East Meets West, the first comprehensive exhibition examining why Pop Art, of all the twentieth century's movements, has had such a powerful influence over artists from world regions that had or still have very different and sometimes opposing ideologies.
Widely regarded as the most significant art movement of the last century, Pop Art exploits identifiable imagery from mass media and everyday life to reflect on the nature in the world in which we live. The exhibition brings together some 250 works by over 60 artists from America, China, the Former Soviet Union and the UK, and will take over the entire Saatchi Gallery. Post Pop: East Meets West examines the relationship between western Pop Art and its lesser-known eastern counterparts including "Sots Art" in the Soviet Union and "Political-Pop" or "Cynical Realism", which has flourished in China since the turn of the twenty-first century.
Although from fundamentally different cultures and ideological backgrounds, the artists in this exhibition play with imagery from commercial advertising, propaganda posters, pictures
of the famous as well as monetary and patriotic motifs in wry and provocative works that
unmistakably reference the Pop Art movement which emerged in America and Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. In the Soviet Union region these works draw attention to state control, conformity, ceremony, pomp and the façade of unanimity amongst the people; in America and Western Europe they serve as a critique of commodity fetishism, the cult of celebrity and our mass-produced, status-driven man-made world; and in China as commentary on the social dislocation created by a new super-power's fascination with wealth and luxury following a period of extreme austerity.
of the famous as well as monetary and patriotic motifs in wry and provocative works that
unmistakably reference the Pop Art movement which emerged in America and Britain in the 1950s and 1960s. In the Soviet Union region these works draw attention to state control, conformity, ceremony, pomp and the façade of unanimity amongst the people; in America and Western Europe they serve as a critique of commodity fetishism, the cult of celebrity and our mass-produced, status-driven man-made world; and in China as commentary on the social dislocation created by a new super-power's fascination with wealth and luxury following a period of extreme austerity.
Post Pop: East Meets West is co-curated by pre-eminent authorities Chang Tsong-Zung, Andrey Erofeev and Marco Livingstone. The exhibition provides an arresting insight into the development of Pop Art's influence outside and within Britain and America since the 1960s. The show explores works by artists from very different parts of the world who were informed by the movement, and whose efforts have help transform Pop Art's legacy into a multifaceted global phenomenon.
Post Pop: East Meets West is the second major collaboration between the Saatchi Gallery and the Tsukanov Family Foundation and follows the success of Breaking The Ice: Moscow Art 1960s-80s which was shown at the Gallery from late November 2012-February 2013, attracted over 600,000 visitors and was extended due to popular demand.
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