On the art of thinking Pop Art digitally

Silvia Gallart is an independent graphic designer and visual artist who lives and works in Switzerland.

She has become a specialist in contemporary digital pop art, which is often characterised by very vivid colours, unconventional combinations and playful compositions. Silvia Gallart’s works are also inspired by her fascination for pop culture (especially pop & rock music, online communication and the internet), graphic elements (typography, geometry and lines), her multicultural background and her love for travelling and different languages. She is constantly reinventing herself and creating surprising series of images.
She has exhibited successfully in Zurich, Zug, Lucerne, Chicago and Barcelona, among other places.

While the artist’s earlier works focused on the idea, the conceptual basis and the subject matter and made frequent use of the collage genre, Silvia Gallart’s attention tends to shift to the formal level in her more recent works. The artist’s pictorial language, which has always been influenced by graphic art, is increasingly determined by geometric elements that are consistently developed further.

If one lets one’s gaze wander back and forth between earlier works of art and those from more recent times, however, one obviously notices an individual signature and a common thread. Silvia Gallart, in keeping with New Media Art or Pop Art, makes use of existing everyday images, whether as models for drawing, as elements in a collage or for intermedial further development by means of computer programmes. She takes up the existing image universe of the Western world, combines it with the recurring colourful palette familiar from graphic art and thus creates works that are partly ironic, partly critical, partly optimistic and humorous, which always function as series as a world or narrative of their own, but which also convey a variety of possible stories in themselves.

The artist consciously uses symbols, icons, existing or self-created slogans (“Connect – Make the Internet Real”, “Thanks for the music”, “Ask your pillow”, “Lost in translation”, “When does a picture disappear?” etc.) and images that are everywhere, regardless of time and place, in our everyday lives determined by a flood of images (David Bowie, Grace Jones, emojis, underground maps, flags and antiques etc.).

Silvia Gallart’s cross-medially conceived works, despite their superficial cheerfulness due to the colour design, do not stick to the surface, but are able to initiate a reflection on our everyday life determined by digital communication technologies and encourage us to think about the mediality of images and their supposed naturalness. Text: Nadja Borer, curator

Articles:
www.peopleofprint.com/solo-artist/silvia-gallart-underground-map-portraits