iPOP is the term used by artist Serena Bocchino to describe her latest body of mixed media work which includes paintings, “photo-paintings,” painted figures and drawings.  Using bright enamel and her unique “pouring technique,” Bocchino creates a true wonderland in this installation.  Surrounding her vivid and lyrical paintings is a garden with ordinary lawn ornaments such as bunnies, squirrels and flamingos which she transforms into iconographic pop elements.  The result is vital and dynamic; a colorful and surprising environment which combines high art with popular culture.

Bocchino has developed her own poetic and unique visual vocabulary of rhythmic marks, lines and imagery.  The result is an exciting frisson of color, mood and atmosphere.  She continues to push the parameters of her paintings using a vibrant palette and textured imagery.  For the first time she will exhibit her “photo-paintings,” which combine digitally manipulated photographs with acrylic plexiglass sheets on which she paints to create a “pop synergy” between the different media.  She continues to fully investigate her subject matter utilizing these and other industrial materials in bold new renderings of her visual language.

In iPOP Bocchino revisits, reinvents and reconstructs her world based on influences of the past three decades.  The philosophical contrast of combining the high art of abstraction with ordinary lawn ornaments creates a contradiction that is both provocative and humorous.  The ornaments are hand painted to match the paintings, and the integration of these figures creates an unexpected reality that spins ideas of fantasy and hope and creates a unique and personal perspective on life.  Bocchino’s mastery of cosmic color and rhythmic abstraction gives the term “pop” - an oft-used expression - an explosive new meaning for our contemporary culture.