Invite Kenny Scharf around to your house for dinner at your peril. Dessert has been eaten, the cheeseboard consumed, and post-prandial digestion is underway in the living room when, after popping into the kitchen to do a quick bit of washing up, you return to find the oil painting hanging above the fireplace has been augmented with a menagerie of multi-coloured life-forms. Creatures leak out from the canvas and ooze down the frame, objects thrust out three-dimensionally and threaten to remove an eye.
Nonsense, of course, I’m sure Scharf is the perfect guest. The Los Angeles artist’s interventionist hi-jinks are performed on found paintings, but probably (hopefully) not found on his friends’ walls. Born Again is a salon-style installation of these mischievous works, and forms part of a larger exhibition at Honor Fraser Gallery covering his diverse career. Things get even more weird when we see Scharf’s Space Vomit assemblages: miscellany accrued over the years (bits of toys, fragments of adverts) hits the canvas like a semi-digested alien puke. Also on display are a selection of Scharf’s early videos (’79-’84), recently transferred from analogue tape to digital format and enhanced. The exhibition closes on 4 April.
Kenny Scharf,
Born Again, 2015
Installation view at Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Courtesy Honor Fraser Gallery
Photography Joshua White/JWPictures.com
