Jungle Fever, 2018 , Pencil, ball point pen and sharpie on paper, 22 x 30 inches
Kenny Scharf's colorful street art murals capture something so simultaneously nostalgic and alien, familiar and weird, it's nearly impossible not to smile. The iconic artist, who rose to fame in the 1980s alongside Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, injects his massive paintings with heavy doses of psychedelia and science fiction, while tweaking childish cartoons into bizarro beasts. For years Scharf has eschewed art world elitism to create works that are undeniably happy, goofy and strange, evoking block parties wherever they're painted.
