Born in Hollywood, California in 1958, Kenny Scharf lives and works in Los Angeles, California and New York, New York. Kenny Scharf rose to prominence alongside his friends and contemporaries Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring in the East Village art scene of the 1980s. One of the first artists to inject elements of street culture into the mainstream of contemporary art, Scharf has continued to pioneer projects like his Cosmic Cavern—a now legendary all-night DayGlo disco party held in the basement of a Brooklyn warehouse from 2009-2010. His paintings incorporate imagery from advertisements, cartoons, and classic Americana into exuberant compositions with an underlying subversive edge.
His work has been included in numerous group exhibitions and he has had solo exhibitions at Pasadena Museum of California Art (2004); Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, Los Angeles (2001); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (1999); The Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida (1997); University Galleries of Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois (1997); Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico (1996); and Museum of Art, Fort Lauderdale, Florida (1995) among other locations around the world.
