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Johnny Romeo

Top Dweller

Name: Top Dweller - Harvey Galleries
SKU: H36021
Price: 8895.00 AUD
Availability: OutOfStock

SKU: H36021

Acrylic and Oil on Canvas

124 x 124 cm Framed

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Dive into the kaleidoscopic depths of the subconscious with Johnny Romeo’s vibrantly absurd homage to Belgian artist Rene Magritte, Top Dweller. In the painting, Romeo takes Magritte’s surrealist visions to hilariously absurdist extremes, as he re-imagines Magritte’s enigmatic apple-faced ‘Son of Man’ (1964) as a debonair fish decked out in a razor-sharp suit while a bowler hat hovers mysteriously above his head. The motif of the fish cleverly harkens back to another of Magritte’s famous paintings, ‘The Presence of Spirit’ (1960), which depicts a man in a bowler hat standing between an eagle and a fish – a fitting metaphor for Romeo’s own tightrope walk between the real and the unreal. Bathed in dreamy, incandescent hues, Romeo’s ‘Head Fish’ stares aloofly at the audience in the throes of a fever dream, his clammy, wide-eyed expression capturing the dizzy euphoria of a surreal ‘Head Rush’. In many ways, the figure feels like a fish out of water, swimming through the slippery ‘Fish Head soup’ of his own inner psyche, while maintaining his cool with an unmistakable Mod swagger. Despite finding himself disoriented between the tangible and the imaginary, Romeo’s suit-donning fish man is learning to own the surrealism of his new reality, an aquatic creature navigating his way on land as he tries to find his own brave new day. The spirit of polished rebellion and subversive confidence in British Mod culture further ripples through the painting in the title Top Dweller, a cheeky slice of Cockney rhyming slang for Paul Weller, the frontman of iconic mod bands such as The Jam and The Style Council.

H36021 Top Dweller, 2025

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About Johnny Romeo

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.