The work of Maria Kozic is not only clever and witty but dare one say it, enjoyable. It has all the instantaneous appeal and immediacy usually associated with Pop art, operating, however, under the generic of "post-pop". It does not presume to exploit the images of popular culture as have previous "popist" movements, but rather it attempts to build a critical discourse within the framework of those images.
One can note this best in Kozic's "Master Pieces". This series is not concerned with celebrating the ascension of art into the realms of the mass media, thus becoming mass cultural, but in exposing the way in which this process deadens and disarms the work, removing any concepts of context. Taking images from the likes of Pollock and Picasso, duplicating them and paring them down to their essential qualities, Kozic then literally fragments them - shattering these icons and all the cultural baggage they carry with them and forcing yet another level on the work. The highly referential and reflexive nature of this art is most apparent in Master Pieces (Warhol), where Kozic shatters that most conclusive of Pop images, Warhol's Campbell's Soupcan, thereby performing the ultimate cannibalization.
Through the method of this work Kozic demonstrates the banalities of the art historical mode. She does this by invoking the almost Pavlovian reflexive response whereby all work is instantly categorized into stylistic variations (Picasso = Blue Period, Cubism, etc.) and then subverts and refutes them. This forces the spectator to acknowledge the way the art historical process is used within the popular stream and just how pervasive a process it is.
In the work, Western Spaghetti, Kozic's flirtation with popular culture
Maria Kozic, Master Pieces (Warhol), 1986.
