Everyone has been talking about Olly Moss and his recent explosion onto the art scene. His retro styling and minimalistic approach to pop culture has everyone’s eyes wide with recollection and fanboy-like appreciation.

Needless to say that when Olly Moss suddenly announced that he was having his first solo show, the Internet immediately took notice. Well, that solo show happened to occur over the weekend and the scene was nothing short of amazing. People took to sleeping bags outside of the venue (Gallery 1988 on Melrose in the heart of Hollywood) and camped out for a good 24 hours just to assert their place in line and secure a piece of what is sure to be any art collector’s dream.

The greatest part about this debacle, those that slept outside the gallery had no idea what they were waiting for as Olly had kept the entire show a secret from everyone. The flyer for the show simply read, “FREE BEER.”

As unsure of the theme that these people were, they were ready to brave the weather, wandering hobos and line cutters just to get the earliest glimpse of their favorite artist’s first show. (That or they were trying to cash in on the 24 year old’s art by flipping it on eBay where some douchebags flip the pieces for 8x that what they paid.)

Either way, the scene was set for a historic moment. As soon as the first group entered, I was on my phone looking for tweets mentioning Olly and sure enough, five minutes later the first pictures started flowing in and the theme was unveiled: paper cuts of Olly’s favorite characters in movies, video games, tv shows and more.

Absolute genius.

I had to wait another two hours to get into the building, but as soon as I entered, I knew it was worth the wait for the energy in the building was amazing and everyone had huge smiles on their faces.

Olly had assured me on Twitter that I wouldn’t walk away empty handed, but upon seeing the hundreds of people stalking the gallery, I wasn’t quite sure. I started looking around at the pieces and that feeling of desperation to leave with a piece immediately left me as I was reminded of what this was all about: identification with a genre.

We were all there to fawn over one man’s love of pop culture and the nerd community in general. Every piece was titled in coordination with that which it was drawn and had little references in the art: John McClaine’s side profile was adorned with broken glass, Pinocchio had a nose that stretched to another frame, an outline with a post-it that said “Where’s Waldo” and the actual piece being hidden above the cash register, Tobias Funke being a blue silhouette and my personal favorite was of Solid Snake and a separate frame above with an exclamation point.

Like I said, this man is a genius.

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