"Like many other teenagers who grew up in the late -70´s, Johnny Acosta was colored immensely by the attitude and way of expressing shapes and forms that the punk culture stood for. If the surroundings are stiff - kick on them. If they are gray - drown them in color. If they are too silent - scream, god damnit.
After screaming and kicking his teens off, Johnny Acosta drifted into the creative world, and today he has worked in the fields of commercials, printing, and photography. The interest in pop artists arose early. He started experimenting with serigraphy in the traditional way. The result are pictures with the energy of punk and the feel of pop-art" -Pelle Almgren
"Johnny Acostas paintings are a fresh new kind of pop art. His work draws from a diverse range of influences.
Acosta makes clear references to Warhol, using cinematic and contemporary techniques for filtering color and overlaying imagery. His work speaks of transcontinental hippness and glamour. Rather than painting household name celebrities, Acosta makes images that speak about a general coolness through flat color and cleverly abstracted lines and shapes. This clever use of modernist abstraction and stylized figuration sometimes verges on non-objective painting. Acostas figures camouflage between the paintings ground and foreground. In this way, the paintings provide a rich surface that reveals itself slowly. The pictorial space is complex and informed by a type of "field space" that is rarely seen combined so effectively with images of glamour and fashion. In this space, Acosta makes good use of bright colors that provide both subtle and stark impressions of figuration. Johnny Acosta exhibits his work internationally. Exhibited in Stockholm , Malmö, Gothenburg and New York and has received excellent response" -Angela Di Bello, Agora gallery New York
"I'm influenced by the pioneers of popart, but I work with the techniques of today, and have the perspective of tomorrow" -Johnny Acosta
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