Artist's Proof: Kenny Scharf - Orbiting, 1998
£0.00
- Line etching and aquatint with hand-painting
- Artist's Proof II of a limited edition of XX
- Mount Size: 33.0 x 39.4cm
- Image Size: 17.50 x 22.50cm
- Signed and dated
- Unframed
Kenny Scharf is an American painter and iconic street artist. His inimitable graffiti paintings gained him notoriety and fame in the New York downtown art scene of the 1980s, with his work regularly featuring stylized aliens and popular culture icons in tessellated, colorful patterns.
Kenny Scharf's plastic like beings personify organic emotions. Bridging the gap between conscious and unconscious, he supplants psychic imprints of pop images with surreal biomorphic beings. Scharf calls his art 'pop abstract surrealism' adding 'the pop is inside' and 'So many people lose that joy of being a child - the wonderment of seeing, the way that children look at things. We can't get any better than that as far as art goes.'.
Many of Scharf's paintings feature a futuristic enviroment inhabited by goofy, primeval creatures or play with stylized globs of paint - what he calls 'glob obs'. One could get lost in his 3-D vortex, twined vinelike organisms the origins of which can be traced from Scharf's travels to the Brazilian rain forest. He began travelling to Brazil in the '80s, and the country's endangered environment became one of his causes celebres.
Kenny Scharf's fun, colourful 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.
