HONOR FRASER 2622 S La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90034 Tel 310.837.0191 | Fax 310.838.0191 [email protected] www.honorfraser.com Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 6pm

Exhibition: : Hodgepodge Dates: April 14 – May 19, 2012 Opening reception: Saturday, April 14, 2012, 6 – 8 pm

Honor Fraser is pleased to present Hodgepodge, Kenny Scharf’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

For this exhibition, Scharf has created several new bodies of work that survey his particular aesthetic approaches and sensibilities. The show features paintings, sculptures, a Cosmic Cavern installation, and a customized Cadillac, as well as an opening night performance by longtime collaborator, Ann Magnuson.

As a child Scharf was fascinated by television and consumer culture. Sitting only inches from the television screen, young Scharf became obsessed with vibrant and surreal imagery of cartoons and low budget sci-fi films. Optimism oozed from these dewy forms of popular culture, reflecting an era when the medium of television was still new and shiny. The outlook towards the future during the 1950s and early 1960s was a lustrous one filled with invention, cutting-edge products, space travel, and an unabashed vision of a better life. Coming on the heels of World War II, the hopefulness of this era was authentic. Various new industries and the jobs they developed were flourishing alongside the comforts of peace and suburbia. There was an aura of progress and prosperity, creating a seemingly realistic expectation of eternal euphoria. This feeling of positivity unhinged is threaded throughout all of the works in Hodgepodge.

While a young artist living in New York in the 1980s, Scharf and other artists of his generation were drawn to works originating from contexts outside gallery spaces. Whether that was graffiti, performances, or parties at the famous , Scharf sought to incorporate his works within situations that anyone and everyone could relate to and more importantly, experience. Like Warhol before him, Scharf became interested in merging the highbrow with the lowbrow, and began working towards ways of incorporating pop-culture into his paintings. As a way to rebel against the highly academic work that was being shown at the time, Scharf’s work reflected an Eden filled with animated colors and fantastical subjects ranging from the Flintstones and the Jetsons, to imaginary characters that could cast either gloom or euphoria onto the desired canvas.

This characteristically bold, sci-fi, 1950s-inspired iconography layers The New and Improved Ultima Suprema Deluxa (2012), a customized 1959 Cadillac. The car has been painted in a hybrid of sea and powder blue, with a band of space creatures having taken hold, including some oft-appropriated characters from The Jetsons cartoon series. This historic symbol of luxury and progress has been turned into a vehicle in which to ride out the Apocalypse in style as it crashes into another sculpture, Picnicaboom (2012), a “picnic table” of sorts with an atomic mushroom cloud cum umbrella exploding from it. Like much of Scharf’s work, these pieces take on notions of creation and destruction, acting out an eternal struggle between the natural and the man-made.

In his numerous hanging Lixo sculptures, Scharf makes use of the washed up trash he collects from the beaches near his studio in Brazil (“lixo” is the Portuguese word for trash). Resurfaced and discolored from overexposure to the sun, sea and sand, these otherwise disregarded objects have long been an integral part of Scharf’s practice. By transforming the “lixo” into ornaments of wonder and nostalgia, they become emblematic of Scharf’s own fascination with the material’s often ignored qualities. Whether it’s household appliances, common detritus, cartoon characters, or automobiles, Kenny finds value in our outdated cultural artifacts, offering them an alternative existence in his psychedelic, Hodgepodge world.

Scharf currently lives and works in New York, Los Angeles, and Brazil. His work can be found in major museums and collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Eli Broad Foundation, MOCA Los Angeles and the Stedelijik Museum. In 2009, a comprehensive catalog of his work was authored by art historian Richard Marshall and published by Rizzoli. Most recently, in 2011, Scharf’s work was featured in the MOCA LA’s Art in the Streets exhibition. Recent solo exhibitions were presented at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York (2011), and The Hole, New York (2010).

HONOR FRASER 2622 S La Cienega Blvd. Los Angeles, California 90034 Tel 310.837.0191 | Fax 310.838.0191 [email protected] www.honorfraser.com Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 6pm

Exhibition: Ann Magnuson: Finism Dates: April 14, 2012 Opening reception: Saturday, April 14, 2012, 6 – 8 pm

Honor Fraser is pleased to host Finism, a performance by Ann Magnuson. The piece will accompany Kenny Shcarf’s exhibition Hodgepodge, and will be performed at the opening on April 14, 2012.

Ann Magnuson is a Los Angeles based actress, singer, writer and performance artist. A key member of the New York downtown scene in the 1980s, Magnuson once worked as the influential manager of Club 57, where she organized countless performances, poetry readings, parties, plays, and exhibitions with fellow artists Tseng Kwong Chi, , Kenny Scharf, and Wendy Wild to name a few. Magnuson became renowned for her work at Club 57, as well as her own work as a captivating and provocative performance artist and has been performing in or producing shows ever since. The atmosphere of freedom and bravado that existed during the 1980s was something that Magnuson was not only inspired by, but something she helped foster, and it continues to inform her work today. Whether it is celebrating the end of the world, Victorian style, in her recent show, Drawing Room Apocalypse, or acting in any number of Hollywood films, Magnuson greatest asset is her seemingly innate ability to seduce and own an audience.

Collaborating since their days at Club 57, Scharf and Magnuson have a long-standing friendship based upon their shared worship of all things fun, groovy and goofy. To help christen Scharf’s new customized Cadillac sculpture, The New and Improved Ultima Suprema Deluxa, Magnuson will interact with the piece in a manner reminiscent of the 1960s Cadillac girls. Cadillac’s television commercials were originally presented in a calendar girl style, wherein glamorized beauties ever so elegantly showcased the cars Vanna White style. Here, Magnuson will recreate those surreal and nostalgic moments, filtered through her own personality and open spontaneity; parading around the car and gesticulating as she draws attention to its features. The title Finism comes out of a shared philosophy that Scharf and Magnuson developed early on in their partnership, leading Magnuson to establish this new kind of art world “–ism”. Finism is art for the end of the world. Think “Fin” at the end of a French film, but it’s not necessarily a grim end. If the end is near, why not celebrate? One should also consider another kind of “fin”: the tailfins on early Cadillacs such as the one used for Scharf’s sculpture. The tailfin was an element of flair added to the design of these cars in order to conceal the gas cap, which was considered to be an eye sore. It embellishes a practicality, turning it into something to enjoy. Like the tailfins on early Cadillac’s, Finism is an ode to the good ole days and all that they promised for the future.

Hollywood credits for Ann Magnuson include The Hunger, Making Mr. Right, Clear and Present Danger, Before and After, The United States of Leland, and Panic Room to name a few. Highlights from her TV career include Anything But Love, , CSI: Miami, and . Off Broadway credits include the Vagina Monologues and Four Days and a Bone. Magnuson also starred in the LA premiere of Amy and play The Book of Love. She has been in several bands including Bleaker Street Incident, Vulcan Death Grip and Bongwater, with whom she released five albums, in addition to releasing multiple albums as a solo artist. Magnuson has also written for Artforum, BUST, VOGUE, and Conde Nast Traveler and for eight years wrote a monthly column, L.A. Woman, for Paper magazine. In 2007 she premiered her ongoing serial “Time Traveling Hooker” at the Joshua Tree Saloon as part of Andrea Zittel’s High Dessert Site event and has curated exhibitions in and Los Angeles. Recently Magnuson has been touring with her show, Drawing Room Apocalypse, as well as working on an upcoming solo album.