OUR MANIFESTO:
ArtPUNK is a contemporary visual neo-realist movement in that it is an interpretation, digestion, and regurgitation of subversive American culture, past and present. It celebrates the sins and weaknesses of humanity and the non-stop bombardment of sex, drugs, alcohol and consumer culture.

First and foremost, the purpose of ArtPUNK is to bring forth a new dark, dangerous, shocking, and in-your-face style of art by hijacking, appropriating, and combining elements of subversive pop-culture to create new meaning. We do not recognize or follow traditional art theory. This movement rejects all art that is stagnant, benign, boring in nature, as well as art that only caters to the upper art world elite. ArtPUNK was forged from the need to destroy and eradicate art theory as being a pleasure for strictly the hi-brow intellectual. Our goal is to give a visual voice to the disenfranchised, the misunderstood, the creative awkward geniuses who don't fit into the standard genres and categories of contemporary art because of the nature and style of their work. ArtPUNK style takes elements from mid-century-modern graphic design, vintage advertisements and slogans, contemporary consumerism, street art, adult content, and is expressed in vibrant bold colors and typography.

With ArtPUNK our mission is to obliterate the barriers that keep provocative artists confined and under the radar. It is time for the subterraneans to emerge and be seen, a time to rise up and break down the structured walls of the contemporary art world to make way for a new visual thunder. For many of us, life is not all champagne and roses, life is hard, gritty, mean, and full of disappointments. In today's day and age, the struggle is real. ArtPUNK is a reflection of our moronic, sleaze-obsessed, gun crazy, boorish society. This area is a ‘Twilight Zone’ of the art world, an area of creative activity that is often ignored by mass America as well as the established art world.

Lastly, ArtPUNK is a creative way to bottle a crazy moment in history where there is much insanity and lunacy occurring on a daily basis. Crime is at an all time high, the proliferation of online sex work and expressing sexuality for a means of income, popularity, and clout is thru the roof, telephone scams and online swindles have become commonplace on the daily, the U.S. is in a state of complete moral disorder and desensitization. This creates great content! If anything, ArtPUNK will capture this demented state and put it in a time capsule for posterity.

ArtPUNK isn't straight nor gay nor anything in-between, it's all about pushing boundaries of what can be acceptable as art. It’s the dissent of corporate contemporary art. Consider it an experiment.

PARAMETERS FOR ART TO BE CONSIDERED ARTPUNK:
1. First and foremost must be PROVOCATIVE in nature, smartly so.
2. Must be bold, eye-catching and in-your-face, must demand attention.
3. Must be SEXUALLY CHARGED and have an element of smartly perverse sexuality or sexually taboo subject matter.
4. Must have a punk attitude (underground, anti-corporate, anti-fascist, anti-bigotry). It's not about 'punk music', 'punk bands' or 'punk flyers/graphics', it's about the attitude that forged that movement in music, it's the ethos of punk, not about the music. you have cyberpunk, steampunk, and now ArtPUNK.
5. Should appropriate commercial/iconic imagery and twist it in a perverse or provocative way to create new meaning and push boundaries.
6. Acceptable common motifs: Guns, sex, drugs, dirty words, retro sleaze, anything subversive or taboo.
-Apollo Staar