The exhibition Pop & Street Art is held from 1st March to 31 May 2022 at Carré d’artistes Beirut Gallery.

The Pop Art or Popular Art was inspired from sources in popular and commercial culture. It elevated the popular culture to the level of fine art. This movement incorporated many different styles and techniques, painting, sculpture, collage and street art. 

The Street Art, referred to as Urban Art, is a form of artwork created in public locations (buildings, streets, trains) for public visibility. Street Art artists, very often, use spray cans, expressive colours and graffiti art. Despite that those art movements emerged in the last century, they still are inspiring number of artists nowadays.

The French artist Sophie Costa, focuses on creating an artistic style that fuses new pop art and abstract paintings. She synthesizes many influences to offer a work reflecting our era. She enjoys reinterpreting the everyday objects, combining collage, explosive colours with upcycled materials, in particular, coke cans, as well as graphic writing and drip painting.In her artwork, she often pays tribute to the pop art pioneers, Basquiat, Warhol and Lichtenstein...

The passion of Graffmatt for painting came about thanks to street art and the hip-hop culture. In his portraits, the artist uses a combination of acrylic and spray paint on canvas. Needing to immerse himself fully in his world, he accompanies his pictorial work by listening to urban music. The choice of musical style is reflected in his works, certain sounds leading him to use dark shades, while other push him towards bright colours. 

Fascinated by women's faces, the Catalan artist, Marc Agusil is drawn to women portraits. Influenced by contemporary artists such as the Chinese painter Kwangho Shin and Georg Baselitz, his work is based on “action painting” and saturated vivid colours. The knife and the brush allow him to give life to his colorful characters, using his own paint, based on pigments in order to obtain a certain effect of relief and texture. 

Pauline Salvan had a particular fondness for artistic design from an early age which she describes as a "basic need". The self-taught artist experimented and got her bearings with painting by testing several techniques until she found the right one for her, acrylic and posca. She qualifies her universe by saying; “childish, a mix between comics and street art, with surreal characters but look carefully there is always a hidden message!”.

Ravi, like Salvan, is also a self-taught French artist. He has always been attracted by bright colors and Pop Art universe. Inspired by artists like Banksy, Koons and Haring, he sculpts different pop art figurines. Ravi likes to give his well-known characters a lively appearance through wood and relief. 

In turn a designer, interior designer and then a sculptor, Denise Nouna Benarrouch, known as “Nouna”, trained in the theory and practice of applied arts at two specialised Parisian schools, before beginning a prolific career devoted to creation and decoration. Her artworks are inspired by primitive and African art, as well as, more recently, many contemporary resin sculptures, powerfully coloured, inspired by Pop art and urban art. Constantly searching for new techniques, the artist strives to make her work evolve according to her aspirations of the moment, with sincerity and passion.

Virginie Laurent, Known as VL, created her own world inspired by childhood, art and pop culture icons. Mickey, Pacman, Banksy and Koons are some of the inspirations and characters that appear in her work. She blends styles and creates her own signatures to bring to life pieces that burst with energy and colour to capture her "odes to life". She has a passion for skulls and has made them her signature that she stamps on all her pieces. 

Nathalie Molla was born in Annecy into an artistic family and flourished in an environment conducive to creativity, devoting herself fully to her passion for both music and drawing from a very early age. Her artworks combine varied techniques to achieve a resolutely contemporary result, which has its place somewhere between pop art and street art aesthetics.