Kenny Scharf

Kenny Scharf’s contribution to the 1987 Luna Luna park was the Wave Swinger Kenny Scharf’s contribution to the 1987 Luna Luna park was the Cartoon Sculptures

Kenny Scharf’s contribution to Luna Luna was a wave swinger dedicated to the cosmic spirits of flight, graffitied with playful geometric shapes and his signature cartoon figures.

Artist

Kenny Scharf

Attraction

Painted chair swing ride

Surrounding sculptures

Born

1958, USA

Scharf was a key figure of 1980s Street Art movement

He creates references to popular culture occur throughout his work, including appropriated cartoon characters and found consumer objects, along with imagined characters

He is a self-described “Pop Surrealist”

Kenny Scharf, Painted chair swing ride and freestanding sculptures, exhibited 1987.

Fairground view: Kenny Scharf, Painted chair swing ride and freestanding sculptures. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, June-August, 1987.

Kenny Scharf uses painting, sculpture, installation, murals, performance, and fashion design to create hallucinatory worlds filled with cartoon characters and brightly colored, surreal, anthropomorphic blobs. Alongside legendary peers such as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, Scharf played an important role in the burgeoning street art community in the East Village art scene in 1980s downtown New York.

Kenny Scharf.
Kenny Scharf.

As part of the first generation to grow up with television, Scharf is drawn to the ability of pop cultural imagery—particularly cartoon characters—to captivate viewers from all walks of life. Drawing from 1960s American cartoons such as The Jetsons and The Flintstones, Scharf’s work also features a recurring cast of original characters which are curvaceous, wide-eyed, and often zooming through the air.

His dynamic, hyper-saturated compositions interweave interests in science fiction, comic books, and animated cartoons, with the traditions of Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism, Surrealism, and Street Art. Scharf describes himself as a “Pop Surrealist” for the ways his work disregards hierarchies between “high” and “low” art, and places emphasis on the importance of combining serious artistic inquiry with play in order to emphasize the creative process and appeal to wide audiences.

Scharf is drawn to the ability of pop cultural imagery—particularly cartoon characters—to captivate viewers from all walks of life.

Fairground view: Kenny Scharf, Painted chair swing ride and freestanding sculptures. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, 1987.

Influenced by growing up near Disneyland on a diet of cartoons and sitcoms, Scharf’s Luna Luna commission comprises a chain swing ride featuring panels spray painted with geometric shapes and his signature cartoon figures. Audience members were suspended from the rotating top of the carousel, above the crowd. Scharf also made six free-standing sculptures installed elsewhere in the park.

Kenny Scharf.

Fairground view: Kenny Scharf, Painted chair swing ride and freestanding sculptures. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, 1987.

Forgotten Fantasy

Los Angeles, CA
Open Until May 12 Open Until May 12

Thirty-six years ago, Luna Luna landed in Hamburg, Germany: the world’s first art amusement park with rides, games, and attractions by visionaries like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, and David Hockney. By a twist of fate, the park’s treasures were soon sealed in 44 shipping containers and forgotten in Texas—until now.