Artwork Description
Decycled Versace Limited Edition Hand-Embellished HPM Archival Pigment Prints with Collage, Aerosol, Pencil, and Varnish Embellishments on Fine Art Paper by Denial Graffiti Street Artist Modern Pop Art.
2021 Signed Limited Edition Numbered & Custom Framed Archival Pigment Print with Collage, Aerosol, Pencil, and Varnish Embellishments Size: 17.8125 x 23.75 Inches Release: December 09, 2021 Run of: 15
Denial’s Decycled Versace: The Medicine of Branding in Contemporary Street Pop Art
Denial’s Decycled Versace, released in 2021 as a hand-embellished archival pigment print, continues the artist’s sharp interrogation of brand worship, identity construction, and the seductive aesthetics of consumerism. Each edition in this 15-print run measures 17.8125 by 23.75 inches, uniquely altered with collage, aerosol, pencil, and varnish layers. Centered within a baroque gold frame, the work features a large, stylized capsule—branded with the iconic Versace Medusa head—set against a background of jagged patterns and fractured color fields. The capsule is marked 100MG, reinforcing its identity as both visual object and conceptual drug. Denial, also known as Daniel Bombardier, uses the pill as a central form throughout his Decycled series to comment on the addictive nature of status and the role luxury logos play in modern identity. By embedding the Versace logo inside the capsule, the work equates brand consumption with self-medication. The gesture is neither glorification nor condemnation—it is exposure. The logo becomes an ingredient, the dosage carefully calculated to deliver an emotional or social high. In this way, Decycled Versace critiques not only the brand but the cultural systems that elevate such symbols to near-mythological status.
Visual Noise and Symbolic Disruption
The background of Decycled Versace is composed of sharp diagonal slices, splatter textures, halftone fields, and expressive spray lines. These elements reference both traditional graffiti techniques and digital design aesthetics. The layering creates visual tension that denies stillness or easy resolution. Against this chaotic backdrop, the sleek and glowing pill shape appears almost sterile in contrast. The effect is disorienting but intentional—luxury, the work seems to suggest, thrives when placed above the messiness it claims to erase. The Medusa head, a long-standing Versace emblem tied to Greek mythology and themes of desire and danger, is reclaimed here as an icon of consumer hypnosis. Placed inside the pill, it becomes an object of internalization. Denial’s use of halftones and rough stenciling techniques further destabilizes the polished aura of the brand, reminding viewers that behind every clean logo is a constructed illusion. In the context of Street Pop Art & Graffiti Artwork, the work reclaims visual space from marketing systems and redistributes it as artistic critique.
The Framed Illusion of Power and Permanence
The ornate gold frame surrounding Decycled Versace plays a critical role in the piece’s messaging. Traditionally associated with classical portraiture and gallery sanctity, the frame lends artificial authority to the artwork. But that reverence is undercut by the content inside—messy, chaotic, ruptured. The pill format, designed to look sleek and scientific, floats inside this field like a sacred relic. The dissonance between material refinement and conceptual rebellion is where the piece gains its weight. Denial’s manipulation of the fine art object mirrors the dual lives of luxury brands, which often straddle the lines between exclusivity and mass visibility. Decycled Versace exists as both critique and artifact of the very system it exposes. By transforming brand logos into medicinal metaphors, Denial forces a reevaluation of how identity is consumed, and how branding operates as both symptom and cure in modern culture. Within the language of Street Pop Art & Graffiti Artwork, this piece functions not just as commentary but as a dose of visual clarity in a culture addicted to image.
