{"id":42850,"date":"2025-07-06T07:56:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T07:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/42850\/"},"modified":"2025-07-06T07:56:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T07:56:15","slug":"kenny-scharf-exhibition-opens-at-mam-shanghai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/42850\/","title":{"rendered":"Kenny Scharf Exhibition Opens at MAM Shanghai"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAs 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<\/a> Museum Shanghai.<\/p>\n

On view through Oct. 8, \u201cKenny Scharf: Emotional\u201d spans decades of the California artist\u2019s 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\u2019s \u201cBeach Club,\u201d an ode to the California beach life that Scharf knows so well.\u00a0Visitors will find the artist\u2019s 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. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Curated by MAM Shanghai\u2019s artistic director\u00a0Shai Baitel,\u00a0the show features paintings, sculptures and other objects that are organized in groups of emotions \u2014 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 \u201ccame 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Designer Kim Jones<\/a> was among the first to see the\u00a0exhibition, having traveled to China<\/a> for the June 28 opening. During his Dior<\/a> days, he collaborated with Scharf.\u00a0Baitel praised Jones for being \u201cone of the first creative directors that undertook the importance of getting street\u00a0artists or people who are connected to the masses rather than the few. Kenny is anti-elitism. He believes that art<\/a> belongs to everybody, which is part of the greater philosophy of street art,\u201d he said. \u201cThe match between Kenny and Dior<\/a> was a perfect fit and it was\u00a0incredibly successful commercially.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baitel suggested Scharf\u2019s daily swims at Venice Beach also provide artistic inspiration. \u201cI 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Kenny<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe work is featured on three floors of the museum.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Clara Melchiorre\/Courtesy MAM Shanghai<\/p>\n

\n\tThe barefoot walk in the gallery\u2019s sand appeals to urbanites, who are craving\u00a0exotic\u00a0places, \u201cand people are doing it, which is incredible,\u201d the artistic director said. \u201cBeaches 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\u2019re sweating in. Even if you are in a museum, you can go all the way to imagining that you are at a\u00a0beach. If you look out the window, you can see the water \u2014 the Huangpu River.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Kenny<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tThe exhibition is the artist\u2019s largest solo retrospective to date.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto by Clara Melchiorre\/Courtesy MAM Shanghai<\/p>\n

\n\tScharf\u2019s work includes exaggerated faces and expressive forms that connects ancient pictographic languages and modern emoji culture. The 66-year-old\u2019s interest in travel led to the Totem sculptures that he has created and six 10-foot ones are featured in the show. \u201cYou 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,\u201d Baitel said. \u201cWith Kenny\u2019s work, you see the faces and you connect through the eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Kenny<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tKenny Scharf, Kim Jones<\/a> and Shai Baitel.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPhoto Courtesy<\/p>\n

\n\tHe noted how Scharf came of age when Andy Warhol was running The Factory, which made it clear \u201cthat 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a daily swimmer, Kenny Scharf has created a beach-like scene with his largest solo exhibition to date,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42851,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1037,648,1032,74,1033,18974,171,33618,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-42850","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-china","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-dior","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-kim-jones","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114805223252372021","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}