Kenny Scharf: Outer Limits

Patrick Painter Inc. proudly presents Outer Limits, an exhibition of new paintings by Kenny Scharf. The exhibition opens February 19 and continues through March 26, 2005. A reception for the artist will be held Saturday, February 19, 2005, 6 – 8 pm. Outer Limits, includes 6 large-scale and 10 small to mid-size acrylic and oil paintings on canvas. Scharf has created “newer, bigger, better” paintings referencing his works from 1981. With a nod towards the architect Morris Lapidus, the hand made glitzy “ultra-neobaroque” frames push the idea of “too much is never enough.” Fin-de-sicle, commentary on consumer culture, alienation of man from nature; are driving themes for Scharf, yet the social relevance of these works are even more important today. Scharf’s series of work is a revisiting of the artists past, in many ways. The cartoon imagery is mixed with psychedelic abstractions that were more prevalent in his works from the 1990’s, “creating a combustible cocktail of Twenty-first Century strum-unddrang.” They show him at his best: psychologically charged figures, both naïve and menacing, animate a child-like universe. Images of consumer culture gone mad fill some of the canvas with a dark sense of play, an unexpected twist of humor; perhaps commentary on the times at hand? In a sense, everything in Scharf’s world appears animated, inspired. Brushstrokes morph eyes and mouths and vie for attention in a place that shivers and flashes, just outside time, and constraints. Born in the San Fernando Valley Kenny Scharf grew up well aware of ‘high’ and ‘low’ in culture, of all that Hollywood and ‘the past’ of The Flintstones and ‘the future’ of The Jetsons indicated. In the early 1980s, in fact, he decided to reinvent himself as the “space-age fantasy boy of the future.” With Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Scharf became a champion of graffiti-fueled power Pop, and spokesperson for a simultaneously playful and perverse cartoon figuration that is of continuing influence and relevance. Masterful and lavish, technique fluent, solutions fresh, his self-styled “Pop- Surrealism” is in demand.

Kenny Scharf
Outer Limits