Pop Art

MariaManuela’s pictures define the contrasts between the culture of the Far East and the western world’s pop-culture at the same time as they bring the two forms together. She derives her inspiration from classic Japanese woodcuts and their motifs of fantastically coiffured, cherry-lipsticked women, dressed in exquisitely patterned kimonos. But what she presents for the viewer are modern young Japanese women in mini-skirts, dancing among the cherry blossom and haiku poems.

Her Pop Icons are painted in vinyl on linen canvas – layer upon layer laboriously laid down to achieve the effect of a printed, japanned surface. The lines of the lips, the semi-circular contours of the eyes and the billowing coiffures are expressed against a monochromatic background.

Her advertisement-like images combine mystique with unequivocal simplicity, setting a stage for all manner of different facial expressions – melancholy, pensive, jovial.