Aqua Teen Force

SKU: H34596

Acrylic and Oil on Canvas
155 x 155 cm Framed

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Since it was first exhibited in 1963, Roy Lichtenstein’s painting ‘Drowning Girl’ has been praised as a masterpiece of melodrama. The popular image of a teary-eyed woman drowning in a turbulent ocean is emblematic of Lichtenstein’s fascination with depicting miserable women trapped in dominant relationships. In Aqua Teen Force, Johnny Romeo updates Lichtenstein’s ‘drowning girl’ for the Feminist MeToo age, transforming her from a hopeless damsel in distress into a confident scuba diver thriving rather than dying amidst the chaotic swells of the ocean. Romeo’s scuba girl navigates the churning waves of life with eyes wide open, no longer consumed by the sadness brought about by failed relationships. Using her trusty scuba mask to breathe underwater, the girl defiantly rises from the murky depths with her eyes fixed up to the audience, a point boldly captured in the triumphant word assemblage ‘Rise Eyes Up’. Romeo’s use of rich blues, aquatic greens and pelagic purples recalls the majestic weight of Hokusai’s ‘Great Wave’ (1831), an influence on Lichtenstein’s original ‘drowning girl’, while also emphasizing the oceanic vastness that the scuba girl has overcome in her quest for self-discovery. Through this process of metamorphosis, Lichtenstein’s drowning girl becomes a symbol of female empowerment that embodies the spirit of the ‘aqua teen’ in the painting’s title. Aqua Teen Force builds on this concept of girl power, subverting the angst-ridden ‘Teen Spirit’ of Nirvana into a source of resilience and strength. On a more meta note, the title is a witty play on the surreal Adult Swim cartoon comedy series ‘Aqua Teen Hunger’, which explores the lives of mass-produced fast-food characters. The reference to commercialized fast food insightfully pays homage to Lichtenstein, who appropriated imagery from DC Comics and pulp literature, often considered the cultural fast food of the 1960s, to create his timeless Pop Art works.

H34596 Aqua Teen Force

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Johnny Romeo is an internationally acclaimed Australian painter. Considered Australia’s leading Pop artist, Romeo is spearheading the global Neo-Expressionist Pop movement with his electrifying collision of rock’n’roll swagger, comic book aesthetics and street art. Described by GQ Magazine Australia as ‘part punk, part pop’, Romeo’s Kitsch Pop works are explosive sugar rushes of Technicolour imagery and urban grittiness that are turning heads worldwide.

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Johnny Romeo

Aqua Teen Force

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