2025
Juxtaposing the faces of iconic celebrities with patterns reminiscent of quilting and folk art, Robert Mars (b. 1969) considers the many facets of American popular culture through the lens of advertising.
In Mars’s mixed-media works, brand names are collaged beneath the visages of mid-century stars such as Elvis, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, with neon lighting and shiny coats of resin on wood panels lending each piece the allure of a covetable consumer object.
Born in New Jersey, Mars studied at the Parsons School of Design and worked for a time as a graphic designer. His cultural mash-ups draw on imagery from his collection of vintage magazines. Combining enlarged Xerox transfers and boldly painted colors in several built-up layers, his works recall the messy remixing of everyday objects by Robert Rauschenberg as well as the explorations of mass reproduction and fame by Andy Warhol. The shape of a Chanel No. 5 bottle, a Louis Vuitton logo and a photograph of Audrey Hepburn are all plucked from mass media as relics of Americana and the obsession with luxury. Distressing the surfaces of the pieces, Mars gives them a timeworn texture, like an old advertisement that might be found on the wall of a roadside gas station, but with a surreal quality in their recontextualized subjects.
The stars and mass-media material in Mars’s work mostly have origins in the 1950s and ’60s, an age that saw the rise of celebrity endorsements during a postwar economic boom in which there were plenty of novel new products to promote. An image of Jackie Kennedy is overlaid with ad copy for Dior; a photograph of a victorious Muhammad Ali is joined with Champion Spark Plugs typography. The nostalgia here is for commerce as much as it is for people who became a brand. In the artist’s dynamic collages, the lines between what, or who, is being packaged and sold are blurred.
Mars has produced commissions for Coca-Cola, was a featured artist for a project with Kari Whitman Interiors and was chosen in 2015 for the cover of Neiman Marcus’s May Book. He has exhibited at the Evansville Museum of Art, Coral Springs Museum of Art and elsewhere.
Find Robert Mars mixed-media works, paintings and other art on 1stDibs.
You've Got a Lot to Like
By Robert Mars
Located in Napa, CA
Mixed Media, Panel, UV Resin Robert Mars uses art to express nostalgia for a time before he was born. An artistic descendent of Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, he explores Amer...
Resin, Mixed Media, Panel
Thief of Hearts
By Robert Mars
Located in Napa, CA
Robert Mars’ graphic compositions and rich colors provide an ideal medium in which to explore his fascination with the Golden Age of American popular culture and the icons of the 195...
Resin, Panel
Scar Tissue
By Robert Mars
Located in Napa, CA
Robert Mars’ graphic compositions and rich colors provide an ideal medium in which to explore his fascination with the Golden Age of American popular culture and the icons of the 195...
Resin, Panel
Some Girls
By Robert Mars
Located in Napa, CA
Robert Mars’ graphic compositions and rich colors provide an ideal medium in which to explore his fascination with the Golden Age of American popular culture and the icons of the 195...
Resin, Panel
Spectre
By Robert Mars
Located in Napa, CA
Robert Mars’ graphic compositions and rich colors provide an ideal medium in which to explore his fascination with the Golden Age of American popular culture and the icons of the 195...
Paper, Varnish, Mixed Media
MS_01.2_24
By Robert Landry
Located in Napa, CA
Somewhere at the intersection of the uncertain and the inevitable, art happens. Robert R. Landry integrates traditional and digital tools at hand in an eclectic vocabulary of nonarbi...
Canvas, Paper, Acrylic
Prince - 3D
By Reisig and Taylor
Located in New York, NY
Homage to the fabulous Prince. About the Artists: Animated through an assemblage of analog, digital, and lenticular photographic technologies, these selections from Reisig and Tay...
Lenticular
Bob Show
By Steve Joester
Located in New York, NY
Mixed Media on Canvas featuring the inimitable Bob Marley.. Canvas tacked onto one inch wood frame. Purposefully left raw. Photographed by Joester. About the Artist: Steve J...
Mixed Media, Wood
PR 43
By Andre Costa
Located in New York, NY
Andre Costa, PR 43, Abstract Acrylic Painting on Vinyl, 19.75 x 19.75, 2015 Colors: Black, Orange, White, Gray, Purple, Red, Yellow, Green Andre Costa is Brazilian visual artist and...
Mixed Media, Acrylic
Freiheit II
Located in London, GB
Zavier Ellis Freiheit II, 2023 Signed on reverse Acrylic, emulsion, spray paint, ink, wax crayon, collage on birch ply 30 x 24 cm 11.8 x 9.4 inches Zavier Ellis combines the use of ...
Mixed Media
Here It Is
By Greg Miller
Located in Santa Monica, CA
(This piece is on two panels) Contextually within the framework of postmodern Neo-pop and Post-pop, Miller utilizes a semiotic process of mining familiar pictorial codes from the pop...
Canvas, Paper, Acrylic
Stardust
By Johnathan Ball
Located in Toronto, ON
Original Hand Signed by Johnathan Ball Johnathan Ball has been working for more than 15 years to establish a style of painting that transforms the language of the street into a hybrid form of abstraction and urban realism. From the outset, JBall has sought to interpret his experience of cities that have served as crossroads in his life, from Toronto to New York to Miami the urban experience is a central theme in his work. Not always bound to one genre he also works from iconic images and film stills while purposefully engaging with the rich history of painting since the rise of abstraction in the 1950s. His work provides markers of time, engages the viewer with mood and line tracing the painting providing an artist lead tour of the work. JBall is also well known for his sculptural work. Sculpting anatomical forms using them as an entirely new canvas for his painting. His sculptures are an accent to his painted works, sometimes bringing levity. JBall is an active muralist working with community programs such as Toronto’s Street Art initiative, as well as private commissions. His notable patrons include The Mayor of Toronto, Universal Music, Blattner energy, and IMT Corporation. JBall (born Toronto, ON 1983) studied at York University, Toronto, where he received his Bachelors in Fine Arts degree, graduating with honors. He was also the recipient of the Ontario Arts Council emerging artist award. Johnathan is currently represented by the Liss Gallery...
Mixed Media
