“I always have that child thing going on in my brain. I'm always looking at everything and being bewildered and amazed by rainbows, butterflies, flowers, you know, I look at flowers and trees and I focus on all that stuff. And I think it's fascinating.” — Kenny Scharf
Reactionary self-reflections characterise the spontaneous face paintings by multidisciplinary American artist Kenny Scharf, whose distinctive style fuses the vocabulary of Surrealism, Pop Art and street art like his contemporaries Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Strint embodies Scharf's fascination with the gestural immediacy of graffiti, the very physical spray-painting process reflecting the artist’s exuberant personality. The ecstatic visualisation and dazzling colour scheme result in striking characters derived from infinite aspects of the artist’s personality, who oscillate between explosive, aggressive energy and deceptive placidity.
Provenance
Lio Malca Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
Exhibited
Los Angeles, Jeffrey Deitch, Kenny Scharf: MOODZ, 1 August – 31 October 2020