22/05/2025 - 09/08/2025
ROCK & WARHOL
FEATURING: Daniele Sigalot, Thelonious Stokes, Carole Feuerman, Veljko Vučković, Salustiano, Milija Čpajak, Sossio, Labotiv, Szymon Oltarzewski
Aria Art Gallery is pleased to announce Rock & Warhol, an engaging exhibition featuring iconic works by Andy Warhol in dialogue with contemporary artists. Curated by Nataša Radojević, the show opens on May 22, 2025, at 7:00 PM, in the gallery’s historic space in the heart of Florence.
Through a carefully curated selection, the exhibition explores key themes of contemporary art introduced by the father of Pop Art, reimagined and reinterpreted through the lens of today’s artists, including Daniele Sigalot, Thelonious Stokes, Carole Feuerman, Veljko Vučković, Salustiano, Milija Čpajak, Sossio, Labotiv, Szymon Oltarzewski. The works create a dynamic and thought-provoking dialogue between different eras and artistic languages. The exhibition unfolds across the various rooms of Aria Art Gallery, each dedicated to a unique conceptual thread, addressing themes such as identity, celebrity, consumer culture, the animal world, and the aesthetics of repetition and surface. This curatorial approach fosters a vibrant, intergenerational exchange, inviting the public to reflect on cultural narratives that continue to resonate today.
Andy Warhol didn’t just transform the image of everyday life into an icon: he multiplied it, amplified it, and overloaded it until it became an integral part of our visual neural system. The Factory, his legendary studio, was more than a production site; it was a cultural device, simultaneously a film set, editorial office, and ongoing happening. It was art, but also rock’n’roll: a transversal and electric energy that fused image, music, performance, celebrity, and consumerism into a single shimmering surface. Rock & Warhol is born as a tribute to that spirit, but it does not propose a nostalgic celebration. Rather, it is a contemporary rewriting, a concert of images, where Pop seriality meets the multiplicity of current artistic languages.
Among the exhibited works, a powerful portrait of Caroline Wiess Law, philanthropist and art collector, stands out. Silkscreened in black on a burnt orange background, the painting was commissioned in the 1970s and reflects both the subject’s refined elegance and Warhol’s full expressive maturity in color and composition, capturing the glamour of an era and the synergy between artist and patron. Also on display are several works from the Ladies and Gentlemen series, in which Warhol portrays Black and Hispanic drag queens and transgender individuals, based on Polaroid photographs he took himself. Created in the 1970s, the series emerged during a culturally vibrant era marked by the rise of Studio 54. The work dedicated to Martha Graham pays tribute to the legendary pioneer of modern dance. Using iconic 1940s photographs by Barbara Morgan, Warhol reinterprets three of Graham’s most significant choreographies — Lamentation, Satyric Festival Song, and Letter to the World (The Kick), transforming movement into vibrant Pop imagery. Completing the exhibition are the iconic Mao series, the unusual and ironic Cow series, the Hans Christian Andersen suite, and Saint Apollonia.
