Check Fest

Kenny Scharf's aesthetic comes from the vocabulary of popular culture. His subversive vision brings together images of American consumerism and a population of vibrant, playful characters that inhabit his fertile imagination and are readily identifiable through his paintings, sculptures, installations and works on paper.

In Check Fest, the simplified images, almost childlike, are elegantly organized in blue and yellow grids making them at the same a readily accessible iconographic vocabulary and a system of signs that translate complex social and political issues. 

Scharf gained prominence in New York City's East Village art scene in the 1980s for his ambitious, cartoon-like installations and paintings and his frequent collaborations with his friends, artists Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Scharf's fun, colorful work is both a nod to the future and a reference to past art historical movements such as Pop and Surrealism. His multidisciplinary practice exists in the realm where pop culture meets science fiction, and his imagery celebrates everything from the Jetsons and the Flintstones to one-eyed creatures, mischievous monsters, and donuts in space.

On almost every level Scharf’s work is a response to the disillusionment he and his generation encountered as they came of age. If reality didn’t measure up to his dreams, then he would create a world that did. His paintings became surreal amalgamations of fantastic fictions and pop culture; his sculptures cartoon-like characters from his make-believe universe. - Mike McGee, Grand Central Art Gallery, CA

SELECTED PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL
Jewish Museum, New York, NY
Miami Art Museum, FL
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY