As a daily swimmer, Kenny Scharf has created a beach-like scene with his largest solo exhibition to date, which has been unveiled at the Modern Art Museum Shanghai.
On view through Oct. 8, “Kenny Scharf: Emotional” spans decades of the California artist’s career with the focus on his exploration of emotions through vivid iconography. More than 120 multidisciplinary artworks are showcased on three floors of the museum. Unmissable is Kenny Scharf’s “Beach Club,” an ode to the California beach life that Scharf knows so well. Visitors will find the artist’s take on a colorful lifeguard tower as the anchor piece in the installation. Surrounded by six new sculptures, there are Scharf-illustrated beach chairs, paddleball games, vintage surfboards, inflatables and skateboards to play up the seaside sensation, as well as sand, palm trees, beach huts and vendor stands. Visitors are encouraged to wear flip-flops and beachwear, or literally feel the sand between their toes.
Curated by MAM Shanghai’s artistic director Shai Baitel, the show features paintings, sculptures and other objects that are organized in groups of emotions — Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness and Awe. While the prominent American researcher Paul Ekman determined through his travels that humanity shares the same facial gestures for individual emotions, Scharf “came up with the same conclusion as an artist. Of course fast-forward, this has given us this iconography that there are reduced emotions, which we are using as emojis. But Kenny did it much earlier before smartphones were invented,” he said.
Designer Kim Jones was among the first to see the exhibition, having traveled to China for the June 28 opening. During his Dior days, he collaborated with Scharf. Baitel praised Jones for being “one of the first creative directors that undertook the importance of getting street artists or people who are connected to the masses rather than the few. Kenny is anti-elitism. He believes that art belongs to everybody, which is part of the greater philosophy of street art,” he said. “The match between Kenny and Dior was a perfect fit and it was incredibly successful commercially.”
Baitel suggested Scharf’s daily swims at Venice Beach also provide artistic inspiration. “I argue that he finishes his swim, walks on the promenade and sees all of the characters there, and goes back to the studio and paints them in this very iconic way,” he said.
The work is featured on three floors of the museum.
Photo by Clara Melchiorre/Courtesy MAM Shanghai
The barefoot walk in the gallery’s sand appeals to urbanites, who are craving exotic places, “and people are doing it, which is incredible,” the artistic director said. “Beaches give us a sense of freedom and stressless feelings. It gives us a chance to relax and reflect. You can possibly do that, if you take off tight sneakers or you remove the shirt you’re sweating in. Even if you are in a museum, you can go all the way to imagining that you are at a beach. If you look out the window, you can see the water — the Huangpu River.
The exhibition is the artist’s largest solo retrospective to date.
Photo by Clara Melchiorre/Courtesy MAM Shanghai
Scharf’s work includes exaggerated faces and expressive forms that connects ancient pictographic languages and modern emoji culture. The 66-year-old’s interest in travel led to the Totem sculptures that he has created and six 10-foot ones are featured in the show. “You can see that he takes such interest in the pride of a tribe and the way that they see their art, which many scholars would think is primitive. But for Kenny, it was a superior way of exemplifying how cultures evolve and develop. He does it in a very Kenny Scharf way with vibrant colors and various-sized shapes,” Baitel said. “With Kenny’s work, you see the faces and you connect through the eyes.”
Kenny Scharf, Kim Jones and Shai Baitel.
Photo Courtesy
He noted how Scharf came of age when Andy Warhol was running The Factory, which made it clear “that artists can do more than paintings and sculptures. They can also do fashion and music, and pretty much exercise their creativity in every form. It was mesmerizing for them to explore everything as individual artists but also as collaborators. It was Kenny, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, who were the three magic artists in a way. And Kenny is the only one who remains alive to tell the story. The rest are gone, sadly.”
