Kenny Scharf (b. 1958). Astro Cumulo Uber Express, 2005. Spray paint, acrylic, enamel, and found objects on fully custom...

Description

Kenny Scharf (b. 1958)
Astro Cumulo Uber Express, 2005
Spray paint, acrylic, enamel, and found objects on fully customized 1960 Cadillac Coupe De Ville
390 cubic in. V-8 engine with automatic transmission
Car is approximately 225 in. long x 80 in. wide x 54.1 in. tall.
License plate: 60-CADI
Identification number: 60G100249
Mileage: 5,434 miles

PROVENANCE:
Private collection, commissioned from the artist, 2005.

EXHIBITED:
Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, Florida, "Kenny Scharf," April 8-June 1, 2006;
Raleigh Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida, "Art Basel Miami Beach," December 7-10, 2006.

LITERATURE:
R. Marshall, Kenny Scharf, New York, 2009, p. 7.

NOTE:
This lot is located in Torrance, California, and is being offered in situ. The buyer will be responsible for making shipping arrangements from this location. U.S. Title and Ownership documents are included.

One thing is certain: the world of Kenny Scharf is anything but boring, anything but beige. Pushing beyond traditional media, he projects his playful vision onto anything and everything, aestheticizing the everyday.

In his 1998 book, Kenny Scharf and the Pursuit of Happiness, art critic Carter Ratliff observes that, "he [Scharf] encourages the hope that manic fun will, one day, evolve into happiness. Or perhaps, in some corner of a Scharfian landscape, that evolutionary leap has already been made." To Scharf, every act in defiance of the bland is worthwhile, big or small, and there is always room for more fun.

Customization, an inherently personal practice, goes hand in hand with Scharf's pursuit of individualism in a world pushing sameness. While his work originally responded to the homogeneity of postwar culture, Scharf's message is perhaps more relevant today than ever before, as a new generation of young people face a sharply efficient consumer economy, rapidly cycling through seeing, liking, purchasing, and discarding. The pressure is not only to consume, but to consume all the same things in order to fit a given aesthetic. In Scharf's youth, it was jocks, punks, and hippies, but today it's micro-trends like '"cottage-core," "granola," "clean," "old money," "new money," or "Y2K," with all of the necessary items for each look conveniently pre-packaged on an Amazon storefront, linked in bio.

Scharf says no. No to rampant consumption and disposable culture. His early customizations, non-functional, imaginary machines, were made from discarded objects scavenged from the streets of New York. In his essay for Customizing Kenny, cultural critic Carlo McCormick notes that "the primary objects that make up Scharf's high canon of lowbrow customs are born of the disused domestic appliances that he salvaged because he thought they looked cool and knew they could look even better." Eventually, he shifted his attention to functional customizations - elaborately decorating working items without sacrificing their original utility.

The Astro Cumulo Uber Express perfectly embodies this spirit: a functional machine turned into pure fun, a multimedia feast that is 100% Scharf. Coming from a generation disillusioned by stagnated dreams of space exploration, Scharf incorporates his favorite themes, visions of Jetsonian futurism, creating for himself the flying cars he was promised as a child.

Scharf's composition on the Express honors the design of the Cadillac, itself a brilliant example of 1950s and 60s futurism, a relic from the golden age of fantasy in American design. The sides are painted to express movement, reinforcing the sleek lines of the car which give the impression of forward motion, even when still. The galactic designs on the roof and trunk produce an almost anti-gravity effect, and the feeling that speed has rocketed the Express into the stars.

A firm believer that "too much is never enough," Scharf covers every inch of the Express, even the interior, enhancing the existing details and highlighting areas that are usually overlooked. Some points, like the interior door latches, act as intimate little secrets, only seen by interacting the with car, reinforcing the point that the Express is meant to be driven, to be played with. A whimsical chariot guiding us through the everyday, injecting moments of fun and happiness into the lives of everyone it passes, and making the world just a little more Scharf.


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