Kenny Scharf

Artist
Kenny Scharf
Attraction
Painted chair swing ride
Born
1958 Los Angeles, USA

Scharf is a painter, Illustrator, sculptor.

He is synonymous with the street art movement in 1980s New York.

He is a self-described ‘Pop Surrealist'.

Kenny Scharf, Painted chair swing ride, exhibited 1987.

Fairground view: Kenny Scharf, Painted chair swing ride. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, June-August, 1987.

Los Angeles-based artist Kenny Scharf is best known for his association with the 1980s East Village art community in downtown New York. Scharf was one of the pioneers of contemporary Street Art alongside contemporaries like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. With work spanning painting, sculpture, installation, murals, performance, and fashion design, Scharf employs a range of techniques and media to create hallucinatory worlds filled with cartoon characters and brightly colored anthropomorphic blobs. Drawing from 1960s American cartoons such as The Jetsons and The Flintstones, Scharf’s work features a recurring cast of original characters—curvaceous, wide-eyed, and often zooming through the air. As part of the first generation to grow up with television, Scharf is drawn to the ability of pop cultural imagery—particularly cartoon characters—to captivate viewers from all walks of life. His dynamic, hyper-saturated compositions merge his interests in science fiction, comic books, and popular culture with the traditions of Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, and Street Art. Scharf describes himself as a “Pop Surrealist'' for the ways his work deconstructs hierarchies between “high” and “low” art and places emphasis on the importance of combining serious artistic inquiry with play in order to highlight the creative process and appeal to wide audiences.

Kenny Scharf.

Kenny Scharf.

Scharf is drawn to the ability of pop cultural imagery—particularly cartoon characters—to captivate viewers from all walks of life.

Fairground view: Kenny Scharf, Painted chair swing ride. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, 1987.

Influenced by growing up near Disneyland on a diet of cartoons and sitcoms, Scharf’s Luna Luna commission comprised a swing ride made up of panels graffitied with playful geometric shapes and his signature cartoon figures. Audience members were suspended from the rotating top of the ride, where they enjoyed views of the grounds and of Scharf's free-standing sculptures that beckoned visitors like carnival barkers.

Fairground view: Kenny Scharf, Painted chair swing ride. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, 1987.

Kenny Scharf.

Forgotten Fantasy

Now open at the shed, nyc

Thirty-seven years ago, Luna Luna landed in Hamburg, Germany: the world’s first art amusement park with rides, games, and attractions by visionaries like Basquiat, Haring, Lichtenstein and Hockney. By a twist of fate, the park’s treasures were soon sealed in 44 shipping containers and forgotten in Texas — until now.