This lighthearted genius of pop culture wants to make people think as well. Every icon from our combined histories is fair game for deconstruction, from colorfully painted World War II Nazi helmets—“just a piece of  metal”—to cartoon renderings of historical figures from the Qajar dynasty. Marzban’s vivid imagination holds supreme sway over every endeavor. He has said that if he analyzes an undertaking, he would never finish it.

Born and raised in London, his childhood interests of graffiti, California skate culture, and punk aesthetic were well nurtured from an early age. Having come across the likes of Jim Phillips and Vernon Courtlandt Johnson amidst the pages of Thrasher Magazine, he was initially inspired to follow a path of graphic design and illustration, before eventually taking a freelance approach to his art. After learning to screen-print his own stickers, he took the public domain of the street as his canvas, blending art, design, and graffiti in a manner that predated the emergence of street art as it is known today.

Topp uses mixed media with screen printing in overlapping layers on paper and board. Images are hand-pulled with mixed-media application in each print, with predetermined sizes and ink selections for different bodies of work.  In the last few years, Topp’s tattooed Disney Princesses and Sesame Street characters have gone viral to the point that his pieces have been pinned over a million times on Pinterest.

DOSSHAUS is an art collective founded in 2011 and the current nom de guerre of David Connelly. Created in response to a society saturated with social-media-generated images in which reality itself seems all the more relative, DOSSAHAUS uses recycled cardboard, paper, and acrylic to create its own highly idealized universe. This cardboard world is at once separate from and a product of modern culture. DOSSHAUS have taken part in more than 20 group art exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York and Miami.

Max’s studio is a massive 10,000 square foot loft on the Upper West Side of Manhattan filled with  photographs of the artist with every president from Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George Bush and, of course, Barack Obama. The rest of the space is filled with paintings of patriotic icons and pop culture subjects: athletes, the New York City skyline, sporting events, even Taylor Swift have somehow come to find refuge in Max’s work. 

Judy Jetson grew up and became a swinger: That’s the impression one might get the first time viewing a Shag painting. The artist Josh Agle—his nom de brosse comes from the SH in “Josh” and the “AG” in Agle—is known for his martini-clutching mod characters in swanky spaces rendered in saturated colors with a distinctive mid-century style. Lithe ladies in bobs and beehives and their cool-cat men lounge on boxy sofas and egg chairs, or sip tropical drinks in bars next to zombies and skeletons while bongo drummers and guitarists play on.