From Walls to Canvases - Get to know Zokoe23

Who is Zokoe23?

Zokoe23 is a British contemporary artist whose work explores the collision of graffiti culture, nostalgia and pop iconography. Growing up in Surrey, Zokoe23 first encountered graffiti as a teenager — pulled in by the energy of spray paint and the sense of freedom it offered. Over time, that initial thrill shifted into a dedicated practice that blends instinctive mark-making with more refined studio technique. 

What Makes His Work Distinctive?

At a glance, Zokoe23’s art hits with explosive colour, animated strokes and familiar visual references — often featuring beloved characters from childhood television, games or pop culture reimagined through an urban lens. 

What begins as energetic, spontaneous drawing or paintwork is refined into something that resonates beyond surface familiarity, bridging the hidden intensity of street art with the collectible qualities of studio works. 


Zokoe23 - Bicycle Bugs

Street Art & Graffiti Roots

The raw energy of graffiti, from New York City subways in the 1970s to European urban walls in the 1980s, reshaped how artists interact with public space. Figures like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring took the language of street drawing and brought it into galleries and museums, blurring the line between fine art and street expression. Basquiat’s frenetic marks and Haring’s rhythmic line work live in the DNA of Zokoe23’s animated surfaces. 

Keith Haring 

Graffiti’s influence also connects to the urban language of text, symbol and repetition something Zokoe23 keeps alive in pieces that feel like modern billboards or posters, layered and vibrant.

Jean Michel Basquait 

Pop Art & Popular Imagery

Artists associated with Pop Art particularly Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, celebrated and critiqued mass media and consumer imagery by elevating everyday visuals (comics, ads, icons) into fine art contexts.

Andy Warhol - Campbells Soup

Warhol’s repeated Marilyns or Campbell’s soup cans removed high art’s distance from the visuals people actually see every day. Zokoe23 similarly takes characters and icons familiar from screens and toys and reframes them with painterly urgency.

Zokoe - Sonik 

This isn’t collage in the traditional sense, Zokoe23 doesn’t physically paste newspapers or posters, but conceptually it stems from the same impulse: to take what’s everywhere and make us look again.

Neo-Expressionism & the Emotional Gesture

During the 1980s, painters like Julian Schnabel and Georg Baselitz returned to expressive, bold painting — large, raw compositions that emphasized gesture, strength and immediacy. Zokoe23’s work illustrates this instinctive energy with controlled colour and composition, mirroring that same emotional immediacy without losing narrative clarity.

Julian Schnabel in studio

You don’t need an art degree to enjoy Zokoe23’s pieces. A useful way to think about his art is this:

They celebrate and reinterpret the images that have shaped our cultural imagination.

Mario Cruisin - Zokoe23

There’s joy in the nostalgia, but also velocity, movement, and a reminder that these icons and characters aren’t static, they move through time. 

Find more of Zokoe23’s vibrant world and discover pieces that bridge street energy with studio finesse.