KENNY SCHARF: JUNGLE JUNGLE JUNGLE
ALMINE RECH BRUSSELS is pleased to present Jungle Jungle Jungle, Kenny Scharf’s fifth solo show with the gallery.
September 04 – October 25, 2025
The new works for his Brussels exhibition combine Scharf’s archetypical combinations of organic forms and figures. Humans and nature merge with the man-made world. “Angular buildings and machines” evoke “The destructive forces of humanity.”1 The past, present, and future all exist in the picture plane. Scharf’s universe has been updated to contend with AI and machines with cognitive capabilities. The future is not how we imagined it would be. The paintings hint at this dystopia, but also leave it behind. In the same way Dorothy left Kansas, Scharf’s parallel reality is a visual whirlwind we are invited to step into. The process of making the paintings is instinctive and well-practiced. A ritual the artist has spent a lifetime perfecting. The images begin life as backgrounds. Moods. Environments. The fun begins. Oil paint. Acrylic. Spray-paint. Silkscreens. Music in the studio sets the rhythm and pace of production. The music is in the painting. The “freedom and flow” is in the painting.
The colors in the work represent ambience and create tension. If the work is monochrome, grey, it’s to focus the eye on the image and brushwork. For Scharf, “Colors are emotions.” This is why the paintings often feature complimentary colors. “Putting opposites together. Yellow and purple. Red and green. Orange and blue. Black and white.” Optical dissonance has always fascinated the artist: “I remember when I was a kid and the arrival of the color television. When no one was looking, I was not watching what was on the TV, I was staring, literally, an inch away from the screen. Watching this crazy psychedelic light show of colors. That’s the saturation that I love.”
The new body of paintings has been produced at a slower tempo. The work has had time to grow organically, with each painting taking up to two months to make. The exhibition includes works from the ongoing series Scharf calls Jungle Paintings. These anthropomorphic explosions of interweaving branches and foliage read like details from Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights (1503–15) put through a Candy Crush filter. “You start with nothing. Then it literally grows, like a jungle. The trees, then the leaves, then the vines, then the insects. It goes on and on. The way a gardener will start with some dirt, and the plants start to do things. I start, and then the painting tells me where to go.” The symbolism of the trees in these works is as much art-historical as spiritual. The trees represent eternity. Protection. Nature. Mother Earth. The world we need to protect. Scharf’s trees are also bound to icons of popular culture.