The Pop Culture Mashup Art Of Isabel Samaras Is Making A Better Yesterday Today

Isabel Samaras is a pop surrealist painter whose newest exhibition, Making A Better Yesterday Today, opens at Varnish Fine Art in San Francisco this Saturday. Her pop culture mashups with an old masters feel caught our attention today, particularly the comic book inspired ones, and we had to show them to someone. Since my neighbors no longer look out of their windows when I stand in their driveway holding pictures on my laptop screen aloft like Lloyd Dobler, you guys will just have to bear the brunt of my, “Oh, oh, look at this” exuberance today.

In her work, Isabel Samaras takes us on a tour through Art History populated with characters from Modern Mythology (20th century television characters and narratives.) Referencing timeless themes, Renaissance Art, Dutch genre painting, Persian Miniatures and Victorian Ethnographic photography, Samaras compresses space and time to create alternative narratives for the familiar characters we grew up watching on TV. [Varnish Fine Art]

That’s a fancy way of saying, “Painting a raccoon chillin’ with a pimp cup is funny, y’all.”

Our favorite ten works from the exhibition, with links directly to the Varnish art gallery’s corresponding purchase page, are collected below. Thanks to Laughing Squid for the assist.

(Click pictures to enlarge.)

Cloud Nine

The Arrival of Hope

Besame Mucho

Song of Birth: The 3 Magi

The Abduction of the Simian Women

Behold My Heart

Get Your Hero On (Adventure Time)

Things That Go Crunk in the Night

Girls Love the Way He Spins

Golden Silence

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