WizardSkull (USA) – Popeye

WizardSkull (USA)
“Popeye” 2022
6c screen print on Munken Rough Paper, 300g/m2
40x40cm, edition of 36
The print ships signed and numbered by the artist

WizardSkull is a Brooklyn-based artist who came up through New York’s skateboard subculture, designing over 200 board graphics before moving into fine art and street work. His wheat-pasted “Sexy Ronald” — a muscular reimagining of Ronald McDonald — went viral and introduced his work to a global audience. In 2018, we invited him to Vienna as Streetartpassage Artist in Residence at the MuseumsQuartier, where he painted two large-scale murals and presented a solo exhibition at our Jan Arnold Gallery.

Popeye renders E.C. Segar’s sailor — the character who dethroned Mickey Mouse as Hollywood’s most popular cartoon figure in the 1930s — as a cascade of flesh tones melting against a saturated yellow ground. Jeff Koons cast the same character in polished steel for $28 million; WizardSkull liquefies him in six layers of screen print ink for a fraction. The corncob pipe survives the meltdown, just barely. Six-color screen print on Munken Rough paper.

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