Kenny Scharf

Waddington Galleries are pleased to announce an exhibition of 13 new paintings by the Los Angeles based, American artist Kenny Scharf. This is his first solo exhibition in the UK since 1992.

The paintings, completed in 2008, demonstrate the continuing way in which Scharf utilizes imagery from our everyday experience. Unlike the earlier generation of artists inspired by popular culture, Scharf grew up with television and in 1965, aged seven, his family bought their first colour set. He would sit inches away from the screen becoming completely absorbed for hours in its vibrant coloured dots. The bright cartoons of Hanna-Barbera, whose characters such as Fred Flintstone Scharf has sometimes included in his work, were to have a lasting impression on his subsequent sensibilities as can be seen in the painting The All New International Hot Dog - a seemingly smiling hot dog hovering in front of cartoon shafts of explosive white light on a "Techicolor" background.