Kenny Scharf, Oil Painting, 2010, oil, acrylic and varnish on linen, 108 x 144 inches, courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery.
Today, Paul Kasmin’s two exhibitions of Kenny Scharf – “NATURAFUTURA” and “THREE DOZEN!” – open at the gallery’s two Chelsea locations. Last week, Whitewall spoke with Scharf over the phone from his LA studio about his mutually exclusive love for donuts and nature.
WHITEWALL: The exhibition “NATURAFUTURA” is a group of new paintings inspired by your coastal studio in Bahia, Brazil. When did you start working from that studio?
KENNY SCHARF: 1982. I married a Brazilian lady and she’s from there, and that’s kind of how that happened.
WW: How does it compare to your studio in LA or Brooklyn?
KS: The studio in Brazil is pretty amazing. It’s an old fisherman’s house. It’s on the beach so when I’m in there painting the light form the sea is bouncing and reflecting into the room. It’s super, incredible, crazy light. And I just look out the window and I see the ocean. It’s like paradise. It doesn’t compare to anywhere else.
WW: While you were painting these works, the BP oil spill occurred and you incorporated that into Oil Painting. Why did you want to address the spill?
KS: My paintings that deal with nature have always had some kind of element of danger or something from man that is lurking. And this painting really did not have any joy as far as celebration of nature, it was basically just my reaction and anger to the spill.
WW: Your paintings work on several levels - the optimistic, fantastic surface and a darker, more critical undertone. But you’re saying the Oil Painting has none of that optimistic surface?
KS: The blue of the water, I guess, would be the pristine nature. But then the black is the oil. They are just like monsters, basically, oily monsters. I felt so angry about it, and it was a way of releasing my anger. I guess it’s a protest painting. It’s my political message. Most of my paintings do have a political message. This one was just a little more overt.
WW: You’ve said that you’re okay with some people who only see that optimistic, colorful side. Why?
KS: Well, I mean, there are so many ways of looking at art or my art and everyone takes something different. I know I put a lot of different layers and meaning into them but I can’t really control what people get out of it. And if people only choose to take the surface - the bright, the happy - that’s fine. I’m not demanding that they see more if they don’t choose to. I just let people pick what they want, what they’re looking for.
WW: Also on view at Paul Kasmin’s other space will be “THREE DOZEN!” - 36 of your donut paintings. For you, what does a donut represent?
KS: “THREE DOZEN!” is a culmination of the donuts I’ve been painting for the past five years. I had this vision of that small gallery being a solid grid of these small donuts, every single one different. There are a lot of things I like about the donut image. One thing I like about what the donut represents is the theory that the universe is shaped like a donut. I also like the donut itself as an object, not only do they look great, they taste really good, and they’re really bad for you. It’s a great pop symbol of what consumerist America is selling us, packaging it in such a beautiful way, making it enticing, when it’s really pretty bad for you. Yet it’s a pleasure and I get into that whole pleasure.
There are so many things about donuts. I like the holes. I like the images of the donuts themselves. I look at it as a real pop symbol, yet it’s also a surrealist take on pop imagery. I feel that it offers me so many different levels in such a simple image that I have no problem doing 36 different varieties. It’s something that I just could keep doing forever because there are so many combinations and ways of making a donut. On another level they are just about paint. Just moving paint around and the love of oil paint. It’s ever inspiring. And if I have them around it satisfies my lust and my hunger. I don’t need to eat them if I’m looking at them all the time. Though, I do like them.
WW: Do you have a favorite?
KS: I like a plain donut. I like more of a home made type of donut. A lot of it has to do with when I came back to LA in 1999 and it seemed like there was a donut shop on every corner. So I started exploring all the donut shops. I did this project with my daughter that we never actually finished, called “Donut Guide to LA.” We drove around taking pictures of all the donut shops and sampling them and making a map of all the donut shop sin LA. We covered a lot of ground and then I don’t know what happened, we kind of gave up.
Kenny Scharf’s Untitled (2010-2011)/Courtesy Paul Kasmin Gallery.
