KENNY SCHARF: EMOTIONAL
28th June, 2025 – 8th October, 2025
The Modern Art Museum (MAM) Shanghai
4777 Binjiang Avenue
Pudong New Area, Shanghai
At MAM Shanghai, Kenny Scharf’s new exhibition brings together decades of work, merging playful surrealism with an immersive vision of California’s beach culture.
This June, the Modern Art Museum Shanghai will stage a comprehensive exhibition of the American artist Kenny Scharf, offering visitors a vivid and immersive exploration of emotional expression. Entitled Emotional, the exhibition opens on 29 June and continues until 8 October.
Bringing together more than 120 works from across Scharf’s career, the show presents his vibrant investigation of the full range of human feeling, expressed through his characteristic blend of pop surrealism and playful imagery. Spanning three floors of the museum, the display includes paintings, sculptures, and large-scale installations that reflect the artist’s idiosyncratic approach to the language of emotion.
Beach Club Rendering
By Stefano Lattanzio
At the centre of the exhibition stands Kenny Scharf’s Beach Club, a large-scale installation that transforms an entire floor of the museum into an imagined California beach scene, inspired by Scharf’s daily swims along the Los Angeles coastline. Complete with sand, palm trees, beach huts, vintage surfboards, and a reinterpretation of Miami Beach’s famous pink lifeguard tower, the Beach Club encapsulates the breezy, sun-drenched atmosphere of Venice Beach, while blending nostalgic kitsch with Scharf’s distinctive pop aesthetic. Visitors are encouraged to arrive in flip-flops or even barefoot to fully experience the setting.
Curated by Shai Baitel, Artistic Director of MAM Shanghai, the exhibition traces Scharf’s pioneering role in New York’s 1980s street art scene, where his brightly coloured, cartoon-like figures became part of the city’s downtown visual culture. His work creates a visual link between ancient pictographs and the symbols of modern digital life, anticipating the rise of emojis long before their appearance in everyday communication. Through distorted faces and fluid forms, Scharf reduces complex emotions—anger, fear, happiness, sadness, disgust and awe—into approachable, often mischievous images.
Scharf’s practice has long extended beyond traditional canvases. His imagery has appeared on cars, household appliances, and numerous everyday objects, erasing the boundary between art and daily life. This approach carries through to the Beach Club, where visitors encounter Scharf-designed paddleboards, beach chairs, inflatables and skateboards. Six newly created sculptures surround the central lifeguard tower.
Throughout the exhibition’s run, MAM Shanghai will also host weekend beach parties with guest DJs, turning the space into a lively, participatory environment that reflects the carefree, surreal world Scharf continues to construct.
KENNY SCHARF: EMOTIONAL opens on the 28th of June, 2025 until the 8th of October, 2025 at The Modern Art Museum (MAM) Shanghai
©2025 The Modern Art Museum (MAM) Shanghai
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