Kenny Scharf Exhibit Brings Pop, Graffiti and ’80s NYC to the Hammer

Lucy Tiven

Now on view, “Hammer Projects: Kenny Scharf” revisits the artist’s large-scale public works. Aspiring to reach a broad audience, Scharf’s murals invoke images from pop culture and TV cartoons while nodding to Scharf’s scrappy graffiti roots.

Kenny Scharf was a pivotal figure in the 1980s New York art scene working in painting, mural, video art, sculpture and even clothing design.

Recontextualized within the walls of the museum, Scharf’s improvisational murals retain the spontaneous sensibility of their early, unsanctioned production when the artist had to work quickly to avoid being arrested for vandalism.

Dubbed “Pop Surrealism” by the artist, the visual language of Scharf’s murals draw inspiration from 1960s American cartoons as well as fine art sources and Scharf’s graffiti contemporaries, creating a cast of original characters suffused with energy and expression. By employing simplified, familiar figures, the artist paradoxically manages to convey dynamic and complex emotional realms.

“Surrealism is about the unconscious, and I feel my work is about the unconscious,” says Scharf. “The images come from the unconscious except that my unconscious is filled with pop imagery. My unconscious is pop, so therefore the art would be Pop-Surrealism.”

Painter Kenny Scharf was born in 1958 and received his B.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts. He is most known for his interdisciplinary work in the East Village art scene of the 1980s. Ultimately embraced by the fine art world, his work has appeared in the 1985 Whitney Biennial and exhibits at the Monterey Museum of Contemporary Art, The Miami Center for the Fine Arts, and the Queens Museum of Art.

Before his work was embraced by museums and galleries, Scharf illustrated the cover art for the B-52s’ fourth studio album, “Bouncing off the Satellites.” A friend and former roommate of iconic graffiti artist Keith Haring, he appears in the documentary “The Universe of Keith Haring” and collaborated with Haring on a blacklight disco installation called “Cosmic Closet,” installed in their apartment.

Hammer Projects: Kenny Scharf is on view at the Hammer Dec. 3, 2015 until May 22, 2016.