Art on the move

 
MondoPop’s art is an integral part of the flow of daily life

In via dei Greci, just a couple of minutes from Piazza di Spagna you will find an art gallery unlike any other in Rome.

By Francesco Paolo Del Re
december 2008

MondoPop International Gallery&Art Shop was opened on 19 October 2007 by three friends who share a passion for modern art: Serena Melandri, Ilaria Beltramme and David Vecchiato. In just over a year the trio and their shop have made their mark on the Rome art scene.

Mondopop has displayed works from some of the most significant contemporary US artists working in Pop Surrealism and Lowbrow art – and has also provided exhibition space for Italian underground artists whose fields move between illustration, comics, street culture and urban art. 

MondoPop is also the first gallery in Rome selling designer vinyl toys and accessories that have proved a huge hit with kids of all ages. Whereas abroad street art has been recognised as a valid and vital artistic current for more than 20 years, the Italian art world is only now starting to sit up and take notice. MondoPop is providing a hugely important shop window for the latest urban graphic art and the language of tattoos, cartoons and comics.

The spirit of the gallery is multicoloured and playful. You might find works that would not be out of place in the big museums or major auction houses, but there’s also much, much more. MondoPop’s art is an integral part of the flow of daily life, of today’s younger generations. It is an art which includes elements of design and merchandising and which lends itself to serial production. It’s art to go, to wear, or to play with.

Don’t expect the beauty of ancient art; the new forms of pop art have revolutionised traditional concepts of beauty, leaving room for the bizzarre, the eccentric and the grotesque. Entering this exhibition space is like plunging into a swirling whirlpool where the Surrealism of Salvador Dalì is mixed with the cinema of horror, cartoons with vintage graphic art, street art with the visual imagery of advertising. For Italy, the homeland of classical beauty, it’s a shock to be faced with art that is often ugly, dirty, disturbing!

MondoPop has also lined up an innovative series of special events. Until January 2009 visitors can enjoy the “Sketchel Group Show”, an exhibition playing with the union between fashion accessories and art. A sketchel, the brainchild of Australian pop artist Jeremyville, is a shoulder satchel concept that houses original art on flexible canvas panels by both up and coming and leading international artists and designers. 37 artists have created their one-off Sketchels for the show in via dei Greci.

Apart from Jeremyville, other major foreign artists to have their work featured at MondoPop include the Berlin-based pop artist Jim Avignon, his compatriot Boris Hoppek who now works out of Barcelona and Gary Baseman from Los Angeles: a trio of enfants terribles who might make Andy Warhol seem sedate and suburban, as they seek new ways to celebrate the complex and contradictory reality of contemporary life.