The museum hotel, 21c, has a new exhibition exploring the influence of popular culture on the world of art today.

by Grayling Holmes / Photos courtesy of 21c Museum Hotels

Move over Andy Warhol. Pop Art has a completely new look — and plenty of star practitioners.

This summer, the museum hotel 21c St. Louis will feature a new exhibit titled: Pop Stars!: Popular Culture and Contemporary Art. It will be shown in the museum hotel’s vast 14,000 square foot second-floor gallery.

Opening July 10, the exhibit showcases 95 artworks from 50 different artists who work in the mediums of painting, photography, sculpture, and moving digital images.

The theme reflects what’s going on here and now. Politicians. Performers. Celebrities. Sports figures. Everything people revere today will be embodied in the show.

“Pop culture flashes before our faces every millisecond, every waking hour of the day,” says Alice Stites, Museum Director and Chief Curator of 21c Museum Hotels. “When we look at our phones. Pop! When we turn on the TV! Pop! When we go to the movies! Pop! When we go to a ballgame. Pop! Every time we open our eyes, we are pummeled with images and sounds that fill our psyche. Pop Stars! will crystallize our obsession with the fast-paced reality we have come to embrace in the 21st century.

“Social media has only served to exacerbate our culture of celebrity,” she continues. “With every TikTok, every YouTube, every 30-second sound bite, to some degree every person is seeking affirmation and on-screen fame. People strive to make a $1 million from a TikTok or viral video. Everything is absorbed through the media. Our own sense of self and identities have been impacted by that desire to be famous for three seconds. 21c is bringing to St. Louis an exhibition that lays bare the pop star in all of us.”

The pop art movement, on which the exhibit is based, is a bridge between common and high art. It came into being to bring the everyday, the ordinary, to the world of fine art. Pop Stars! spans what began in the 20th century and casts the net into the waters of the 21st.

“Pop culture is our culture,” Stites says. “Although this exhibit has been shown six times at other locations, the exhibition has changed and grown with each revolution, and is now much bigger. The show will bring the new and the now. “

Blockchain technology has emerged as a driving force and instrument utilized by digital artists to reshape the way their art is showcased and monetized. Once only the “currency” of the crypto world, blockchain now ensures that artists can “tokenize” their digital creations on the blockchain. The new trend will be part of the Pop Stars! exhibit. 

“These tokens are called NFTs,“ Alice explains. “NFT stands for non-fungible tokens, and it allows artists to embed royalty mechanisms into the code of their digital works and create smart contracts to essentially copyright their works of art.”

One such artist in the exhibit is the internationally recognized artist Brendan Fernandes. “What you will see will be a video screen and it will look just like a video, but the original form of the work was made digitally using blockchain technology as an NFT,” Stites says.

Based in Chicago, Brendan ‘s work addresses issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest and other forms of collective movement. His works have been shown at the Guggenheim, the MFA Chicago, the Barnes Foundation and more. In September, the Pulitzer will be presenting a new work by Brendan. “We have another work by him in the show that’s actually a neon wall sculpture that’s based on a West African mask,” Alice says. 

Celebrated Atlanta artist Fahamu Pecou will speak at the opening reception on July 23rd. “He’s shown all around the world,” Stites says. Pop Stars features “Broken Open” by Fahamu. The 21c musuem curator says that it’s not really a self-portrait, the painting looks like a rock star singing on stage and covered in gold leaf. He uses the painting to denote both the triumph and trauma he has been through as a black man.

The main gallery of 21c was once the basketball court of the historic downtown YMCA. “Hold up!” Alice says. “You just reminded me of something. I am very excited that there is actually a whole section of the show that is about sports and the pop culture associated with it.”

One of the star attractions of Pop Stars! will be a video of the artist Mark Bradford shooting hoops while wearing a repurposed Laker’s uniform that he’s turned into an antebellum women’s dress with a hoop skirt. He’s playing basketball on a very windy day in Santa Ana.

Over and over again and against all odds, he tries to shoot the basketball into the hoop. Wearing the hoop skirt, he keeps falling. He finally makes the basket. Alice explains that Bradford made the video after Obama was elected in 2008, and that it is a metaphor for achieving something monumental even though the odds are stacked against you.

Like the O, the 2-ton ball of glass filled with distilled water that stands in the foyer of the 21c hotel, the Pop Stars! exhibition is designed to leave visitors agape in wonder. While the O, by artist Serkan Ökaya, is one of several permanent art installations at 21c St. Louis, Pop Stars! is a traveling exhibition that will continue to evolve and grow with time.

“Like Chicago’s famed Bean, and dare I say, someday comparable St. Louis’ Gateway Arch, I hope that the O and other permanent installations will put 21c — the 21st-century contemporary art museum hotel — on the proverbial map,” Stites says.

Just as the 21st century daily unveils fresh paths, 21c continually forges new concepts. It is the first contemporary art museum to be paired with an upscale boutique hotel. It is the first to own its art collection and the first to be free and open to the public 365/24/7.