![]() Oh, I remember it was called the Surprise Store, but that's about all I knew in Culver City. When I was in high school, I used to go to the movie theater and for the jean stores. Kenny: Yeah-well, I grew up in LA and I knew Culver City for the movie theater. Come on everybody we need to get together and do something!ĭan: Cool. Lately, I feel the need to utilize all of the dire headlines we are all confronting on a daily basis as we enter the most dangerous and stressful moment in our ecological human history. I have been making this my main focus pretty much with all of my messaging either blatant in your face or underlying and subtle, but it’s always there. Kenny: I feel that I can’t be quiet about my obsessions which have always been our environment and the danger to our fragile ecosystem. Do you think it's important for artists to have a political voice? ![]() Now I live a few blocks from my grandkids so I am not going anywhere far away for too long!ĭan: Some of your recent paintings have referenced global warming and other environmental issues. LA was much more open and easy at that time. There were times when I wanted to come back and I actually did briefly a few years ago but I felt priced out of the kind of space that I needed and was used to working in. ![]() I left New York in the early 90s feeling lost and sad about the deaths of many of my close friends and loved ones. Living back here where I grew up feels good and allows me to be connected to the art world, yet I am much closer to the sky, trees and the pacific ocean. Growing up in LA shaped much of my visual language. My desires, dreams, and ambitions were shared by like-minded young minds in a strategic time in our evolutions as artists. What drew you back to the West Coast, and how do you think that the choice of location has impacted your life and work? But, for the past twenty years or so, Los Angeles has been your home base. IN WHICH I CONNECT WITH KENNY VIA EMAIL AND HE ANSWERS A FEW QUESTIONSĭan: Hi Kenny! So jumping right in… you first came to prominence in New York in the early 1980s. That said, in this crazy moment in the world, where we can all use a bit of fun and sunshine in our lives, it felt like the right time to finally share this interview with the amazingly prolific (and cool, and vibrant, and talented, and fun, and larger-than-life) Kenny Scharf. Why? I think it was because Kenny is one of my art heroes and I struggled with finding how to best represent the experience of meeting and hanging out with someone as unique and dynamic as Kenny. I originally connected with Kenny Scharf last year, but it has taken me a while to prepare this interview. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Work by Scharf is held in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, The Broad Foundation, Los Angeles, and The Jewish Museum, New York, in addition to others worldwide. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Miami Center for the Fine Arts, Florida, and the Queens Museum of Art, New York, among others. Scharf was included in the 1985 Whitney Biennial and again in their show “Fast Forward: Painting from the 1980s” in 2017. Many of his larger works still adorn New York streets to this day. Often working with improvisation, he creates playful, gestural pieces that blend stylized motifs with references to the surreal, science fiction, and icons of popular culture. A painter and performer inhabiting the visual worlds of both street art and popular culture, Scharf’s graffiti paintings gained him notoriety and established a vernacular language all his own. Kenny Scharf (born in Los Angeles, 1958) attended Manhattan’s School of Visual Arts and came of age in the 1980s New York downtown art scene alongside his contemporaries Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
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