A tastemaker popularises what was not. During World War Two, consuming canned food signalled modernity and sophistication, while the farm-to-table movement now signals refinement in fine dining circles. Tastemakers lead the connoisseuring activity of determining what merits attention and what does not – particularly in art. Sean Go, an emerging artist based in Paris, is a leader when it comes to approaching art from an intellectual lens, while maintaining child-like honour and vigorous curiosity. Go’s works, reminiscent of Warhol screen-prints evolving into rock and roll creatures, carries humor and levity when it comes to altering perceptions of what is acceptable art. Sometimes, Go’s works even capture the spirit of Richard Prince’s controversial photos and gimmicks, as well as Damien Hirst’s romance with the performative aspect of choosing colours. With a constellation of radiant creatures and alternative pop culture characters flooding his canvases, Go challenges his viewers to open themselves up to the possibilities that one can journey on in their life.

The role of an artist, despite what people may think, is not to be an arbiter of beauty, but rather to be a Socratic thinker who asks questions that help society reflect and open dialogues with intellectual paradigms that may not be in the mainstream. Paul Gauguin and other impressionists paved the way for more dynamic lifelike motion-filled pieces, just as gestural abstractionists Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Lee Krasner embodied free spirited thinking with their splatters and colourful clouds. For Go, his work covers the lines of post-colonialism, sustainability, and the grand spectacle. Art as spectacle, most notably in gaudy colours, with large logos and “look at me” chaos, has been shamelessly promoted since the advent of photography. For Go, he challenges cultural notions of Disney’s magnanimity, studies the failure of Western saviour complexes, and criticises the inability for oppressed nations, peoples, and minorities to reconcile their stories as love-worthy. Go’s space fields, chimeric cats, and Asian Barbies are symbols of abstract and relative ideas that he aims to propagate or bring into the public intellectual battlegrounds.

One of Go’s most dominant subject matters is Pokémon, as they have immense storytelling value, which comes as a result of varying lived experience in the context of a ubiquitous and an almost omnipresent game. Shared experiences enable people to connect deeply with one another, while providing experiences radically different yet so similar in the choices that one makes in the games Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow. For Go, it looks like choice and the ideas of preordained destiny are weighty, as Go’s messaging and communicating directly speaks about the power of self-belief, willpower, and arduousness in overcoming the odds. Call it kitsch, but motivational stories help advance the world and are timeless vessels for human progress.

When you look at Go and his work, you can tell that his strokes are chaotically calculated and that nuance is his expertise. With an unmatched education, artist Sean Go is a conscious participant in the production of knowledge and tastes. Go has 8 degrees from top educational institutions across the world. Not online courses and not part-time programs – full-time rigorous programs that are coveted training grounds for designers and businessmen, depending on his degree. These include prestigious schools such as Columbia, Parsons School of Design, Emory, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and UC Berkeley. Go spent multiple years in finance and venture capital before he turned to his lifelong passion in fine art. Go even founded a hedge fund with his brother Jorge. Upon pursing the arts, Go delved right into the most highly ranked universities in key art-historical city centres, graduating from Fashion Institute of Technology in 2022 with a Master’s of Art and currently enrolled in the Parson’s School of Design in Paris.

Like many artists including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and Juan Luna, mastery of art requires travel and an absorption of the vitality of life, an interchange of ideas and processes, and a belief that through art, we can build a more loving world free of criticism, fear, and rejection. That is exactly what Sean Go is setting out to do.