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Artist Kenny Scharf is turning the Portland Art Museum into a graffitied rave scene full of neon tags and blacklights this Thursday. But first, he tagged Horse Brass bartender Hugh Folkerth’s gold Camry.
Starting this week, Scharf’s Cosmic Cavern will make PAM look more like a 1980s club than the white tower it usually takes flack for being.
The show started in a closet in New York in 1981. Scharf was sharing a tiny apartment with fellow artist Keith Haring when he got the idea to transform their closet into what looks like an acid trip on Mars.
He purposefully explodes “high art,” making what museum curators would call Pop Surrealism into a seizure-inducing universe of neon cartooning and fluorescent graffiti. Scharf has installed his Cavern in art galleries and museums, but also in suitcases, basements and RVs.
But if Portlanders know his name, it's from the Tikitotmoniki Totems—those cartoonish heads stacked stories-high in Jamison Square.
To preview his First Thursday opening, Scharf made more very public art this morning. "Tattooing" cars in the PAM courtyard, Scharf tagged the side doors of Folkerth's Camry and a vintage BMW convertible (this is PAM, after all) that belongs to Trail Blazers exec John Goodwin.
"Call it a lightly planned spontaneity," said Museum spokesperson Ian Gillingham.
GO: Cosmic Cavern is at the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave., 226-2811. Nov. 5 through Feb. 21, 2016.
Willamette Week