Soul Man, Sex Machine

🎨 Artwork Information Sheet

Title of the Work: Soul Man, Sex Machine
Artist: Fair Fab (signature and logo in bottom right)
Medium: Digital collage, neon-style typography, mixed media layering, graffiti/pop culture elements
Date: Contemporary

Description of the Artwork

Soul Man, Sex Machine is an electric, provocative explosion of funk energy, sexual politics, and media iconography, centered around the legendary James Brown—a.k.a. “The Godfather of Soul.” The work pulsates with high-saturation reds, yellows, and neon blues, blending graffiti textures, retro advertisements, and layered celebrity imagery into a dense visual funk.

The handwritten words “Get Up,” “Soul Man,” “I’m a Sex Machine”, scrawl across the image like performance cues or shouted refrains, quoting directly from Brown's iconic stage persona. Behind them, visual snippets of Playboy iconography, vintage pin-ups, and magazine covers evoke a world of amplified masculinity, fame, and raw charisma.

Brown himself appears in fragmented bursts—never static—surrounded by echoes of power, rhythm, and sensuality. The work feels like the visual equivalent of one of his performances: fast, hot, impossible to ignore.

Artistic Influences

• Pop Art (Warhol, Lichtenstein) for the use of mass-media fragments

• Graffiti art & street collage

• 1970s funk and soul aesthetics: neon, glitter, and expressive fashion

• James Brown’s persona: bold, unapologetic, hyper-masculine, and politically charged

Curator’s Note

“Fair Fab’s ‘Soul Man, Sex Machine’ is funk reimagined as visual language. It’s bold, fast, and unfiltered—mirroring the electrifying showmanship of James Brown himself. The piece critiques and celebrates pop masculinity all at once: playmates, stage lights, slogans, and sweat. It’s not just a portrait—it’s a fever dream of 1970s energy, pulsing to the beat of liberation and excess.”