Every shop has a founder. Ours also happens to be one of its artists. I work under the name Martin Zen, and ARTSY FARTSY began in 2018 as a place for my own work — a small collection of ironic slogans and surreal sketches — with the ambition of challenging the generic wall art that fills most homes. Today the shop sells the work of more than 1,000 artists. But I still make my own.
What I make
My work is surreal and symbolic. It is about human duality, identity and emotion — the gap between how we look and how we feel, and the characters we play. Visually I try to combine refined aesthetics with a rebellious edge: images that look calm at first and then do something unexpected. There are around eighty of my works in the shop, all of them Artsy Exclusive — you will only find them here.
Mr. Ballet - Martin Zen
Vespa Ballerina - Martin Zen
The Moon - Martin Zen
Rothko Monkey Business - Martin Zen
Rothko Goes Bananas - Martin Zen
A few recurring characters
The dancers. Mr. Ballet, Magic Ballet, Zebra Ballet, Vespa Ballerina — ballet keeps coming back in my work because it is the perfect picture of duality: effortless on the surface, brutal underneath.
The animals with manners. Zoophisticated and Zoomelier put animals into human roles, which says more about us than about them.
Conversations with Rothko. Rothko Monkey Business and Rothko Goes Bananas take the most serious colour fields in modern art and refuse to take them seriously. Colour field painting is also the style of our best-selling print, which you can read about in Rothko and colour field posters.
The quiet ones. Overcome, The Moon and Time Alone are simpler and more personal, and — perhaps because of that — they are among the ones customers buy most.
Why an artist runs a poster shop
Because I know what it is like on the other side. Most artists do not want to spend their time on printing, packing and marketing, and most shops do not care much about the artists they sell. ARTSY FARTSY is built to do both properly: we print in our own studio in Copenhagen, and every artist keeps their rights and earns a royalty on every sale. You can read more in meet the artists and printed in Copenhagen.
All of my work is in the Martin Zen collection.
— Martin Zen