Universe

Rello is a contemporary pop artist and illustrator based in Chicago. His concentrations are art editions, consumer goods and collectible objects. As a self taught artist Rello has been making art for over a decade.

What is Pop Art?

Pop Art is an art movement of the mid-20th century characterized by the use of recognizable mass-culture images and elements in art, often with a satirical or ironic tone. It emerged as a response to the dominant ideas of abstract expressionism.

Cherry Mountain Arts is a fine art exhibit space and novelty shop. Our function will be more reminiscent of a museum and its gift shop rather than a traditional gallery space. The space is split into three pieces:Novelty Shop, Exhibit Space 001 and Exhibit Space 002. This layout allows us to maximize our ability to work with different artists regularly. At CMA, we believe that art should have no limits to how it’s defined. Our positioning in the gallery world will be fun, purposeful and boundless. We will strive to give more artists a platform to grow.

P.I.A.B. is really a series of questions disguised as a statement. If a world famous and iconic cartoon character was presented as black, would you love black people more? Would you protect us? Would you uplift us? Would you finally listen to us? When will the world love black people as much as they love black culture?

Ozzy is both a symbol and a test subject. He’s a symbol of “what if” and because of that his existence and purpose has become a study of that same “what if” question. The names Ozzy & Ruby were inspired by the love and legacy of Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee. Black love is such a powerful weapon.

Everything starts with a woman. If Ozzy is our test subject then Ruby is our spark that started the idea. Before I even started on the Ozzy character, I created Ruby first. Because of how powerful her image was, it led me to go deeper down the rabbit hole of black representation.

This is inspired by my love of Murakami and more importantly my love for the complexity of a flower. The flower is possibly one of the most intriguing objects we encounter in our daily lives. From a symbolic standpoint flowers tend to represent love and adoration. From a scientific standpoint flowers are the only living creature that operate with both male and female parts and the world doesn’t hate them for it.