Pop! Roses (framed)

Burton Morris

30″ × 35″ (framed)

Acrylic, Spray Paint, and Layered Silkscreen on Canvas

Pop Roses! is presented as part of Burton Morris’ solo exhibition Icons in Bloom at MASH Gallery. The work belongs to the artist’s Pop! x Bang! series, where his signature popcorn box icon is reimagined and filled with roses across multiple color variations. Inspired by a moment of childhood imagination in which Morris’ daughter transformed a popcorn-shaped vessel into a vase for flowers, the work merges the visual language of cinema culture with the romantic symbolism of the rose, bringing together entertainment, beauty, and luxury within a single emblem.

While Morris’ earlier works were rooted in sharply defined contour lines and graphic flatness, echoing the mechanical precision associated with mid-century Pop Art, this new body of work introduces a more layered and process-driven approach. Through the integration of silkscreen, spray paint, and hand-painted acrylic, repetition becomes less about uniformity and more about variation and accumulation. Historically, artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein elevated consumer imagery through replication. In contrast, Morris advances contemporary pop art by allowing the repeated icon to shift tonally and materially across each panel, transforming the image from a fixed commercial signifier into a dynamic visual field.

These works demonstrate Morris’ evolving contribution to redefining Pop Art in the 21st century. The popcorn box, traditionally associated with mass entertainment, becomes a compositional framework for organic growth, where surface variation introduces movement and depth beyond the historical limitations of flat graphic reproduction.