POP 2008 IS UPON US!

Finally! Pop Montreal is back, and my annual series of Pop poster is very near completion. No more finishing three days into the festival like last year! All right! Check out the Pop Montreal website for all the details, and start planning your week now.

PUCES POP
Once again I’ll be at Puces Pop on October 4 & 5, 11 am – 7 pm at St. Michel Church Hall (105 St. Viateur O). This will be the place to check out all the new Pop Montreal Posters, as well as more work form the past year. I’ll be selling original drawing and paintings, as well as small and large prints, and showing sketches and work which has never been seen before!

ART POP
Check out my show “SUPERMEN DON’T PROTECT YOU ANYMORE”
Opens 7pm – 9pm, Saturday Oct 4th – Runs until Oct 31st, 2008.
Librairie Drawn & Quarterly, 211 Ouest Bernard.

POP CASTS
Expect more of these in the weeks ahead, Andrew, myself and new host Laura Glowaki, are back with banter and music to entertain our audience of 12 people worldwide! It just wouldn’t be Pop Montreal without us.

Check out the rest of the series and an explanation of it below…

“Nighthawks” Based on Edward Hopper’s painting of the same name.

ABOUT THIS YEAR’S SERIES
Four years ago a promoter friend asked if I could do a poster for his series of 5 shows during the Pop Montreal festival. “What!?” I said, shocked and practically spitting cream soda all over the room. “Me? Make a poster?  Pop Montreal? What in the hell do you mean, Andre? Just what the hell is this?”

Well that was then, and that was a long way from now. Now, I’ve done an annual series of five posters for Pop Montreal each year, and each year I try to set the bar a little higher. The goal is always to try and do things a little differently while still sticking to the series signature themes of Heros, Hipsters, and the City of Montreal. As the artist, what’s most important for me to see improvement in my draftsmanship and use of colour and composition. So here I try putting to use all the little improvements and tricks I’ve acquired over the year, and do my best arrange all these decisions and hard work into the five posters. This is actually the easier goal to achieve. The second challenge is the conceptual aspect of the work. “Is this original? Is it any funnier? Am I simply repeating what works, or have I given the people something new?” These questions take a long time for me, and I’m not always satisfied with the answer.

This year’s series attempts to go beyond that, and while sticking to its tradition of superheroes and the city, this installment draws upon inspiration from popular iconography. Classic images from art, film and history serve as the foundation for several reinterpretations. This led to a remake of painter Edward Hopper’s classic “Nighthawks” diner scene, which involves the substitution of a few costume-clad hipsters for its patrons and recognizable greasy spoon Nouveau Palais, as its setting.  As well as an ambitious re-rendering of a scene from Kennedy’s “Ask not” speech, in which Dylan plants real Montreal community leaders in the images key roles, and fills in the background with a sea of hundreds of local personalities to search through, not unlike a Mile End “Where’s Waldo”.

One of the other key differences in this years series, is that for the first time I am using only original characters, rather then flaunting the formidable copyright laws of better know caped crusaders. Though a resemblance to many superhero greats is still there and not always unintended.  The first poster of the series (utmost top) features an original character called “F”, who will be debuting in a comic book of my own called “Cosmic Failure”. That poster draws upon the first appearance of Spiderman on the cover of Amazing Fantasy #15, for its dynamic pose and composition. Any parallels that F may share with the wall crawling vigilante should not be over looked. The two bare common atributes in terms of powers, stature and a proclivity for selfloathing. But the most major differnces betwen these heroes, is that much to F’s dismay, Spiderman is a mere ink drawing and he himself is at times all too real, alive and burdended by a world were Superman do not exist. (More on Cosmic Failure in the months ahead, no release date is yet sheduled.)

A scene from and awkward romance, based on the Woody Allen Film “Annie Hall”

Based on photo from John Kennedy’s “Ask Not” speech.

Ou est Andre? — To search for…

- A Mermaid
- A Scroll
- A Wizard
- Joker & The Batman and Harlequin
- The Arcade Fire
- The X-Men
- A man vomiting
- A Cat
- A Ninja Turtle
- Nick Cave
and Many more!

“Origins” Based on a photo taken by the artist, at the PA Marche on Parc and Laurie.