Robert Gniewek
Region: Midwest
City / State: Dearborn, MI
The mugshot portraits are my latest effort to combine pop art
iconography with photorealist painting. With this series, I have
gone back to the roots of photorealism, a genre that emerged
from the pop art movement of the 1960s.
The subjects of the paintings are notorious criminals whose
mugshots are often seen in various media outlets, becoming a
familiar part of our popular culture. I enlarge the scale to portray
the subjects as larger-than-life characters, as an observation and
reflection on our voyeuristic, violent, and pop-culture-obsessed
society.
![](https://nap-master.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/entry_thumb/public/GniewekA.jpg?pOa2wNFYyxz3sHyvekm0ce6ypd4RaUiR&itok=pVRLwplX)
![](https://nap-master.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/entry_thumb/public/GniewekB.jpg?ssjXq0F1HBmYIsQfeDtU7TU7UnykuMdq&itok=FwPZNkUY)
![](https://nap-master.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/styles/bio_cover_img/public/gniewek_headshot.jpg?__kZdCGJT9f0oOUbpKYq9WqbzjF8NDsC&itok=05I32PWq)