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Johnny Romeo

Hood Star

Name: Hood Star - Harvey Galleries
SKU: H33507
Price: 8895.00 AUD
Availability: OutOfStock

SKU: H33507

Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

124 x 124 cm Framed

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H33507 Hood Star

Everyone in the world wears a mask. To keep a secret. To escape the past. To be someone else. For some, however, hiding behind a facade consumes the very core of their identity. Few figures embody the complexities of this deception quite like The Joker, whose clown make-up and devilish grin famously obscure the character and his true intentions. In Hood Star, Johnny Romeo re-envisages the classic Batman villain as a Technicolour skater soaring through the air as he nails an ollie. Vibrant candy colours inspired by the Joker’s flower lapel are used to humanize the character and chip away at the diabolical, anarchic edge we associate with him. Far from the scowling scoundrel of the DC Comics universe, Romeo’s Joker is a euphoric, confident figure who is unafraid to show the world who he really is – a sharply-dressed skater in clown make-up. The joyous spirit of the work is reflected in the text passage ‘We Deceive’, which is deftly transfigured from a mantra of betrayal into ‘We Believe’, a powerful expression of hope that speaks to our ability to achieve anything we put our mind to. Romeo builds on this feeling of belief through both the title Hood Star, with its allusions to ‘reaching for the stars’ and the neighbourhood stars of skate culture, and in the figure of the Joker himself, who defies gravity as his arms stretch upwards towards the heavens.

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About Johnny Romeo

Johnny Romeo is an internationally acclaimed Australian painter, widely regarded as Australia’s leading Pop artist. As a seminal figure in the global Neo-Expressionist Pop movement, Romeo fuses the irreverent swagger of rock’n’roll with the visual semiotics of comic books and the raw immediacy of street art. GQ Magazine Australia aptly described his aesthetic as ‘part punk, part pop’, a stylistic hybrid that defines Romeo’s vivid, neon-drenched works and its balance of candy colour explosions and punchy, rebellious imagery. Romeo’s signature Kitsch Pop paintings are electrifying visual assemblages, combining Technicolour palettes and urban iconography to produce a visceral, high-octane art experience.