Eric Firestone Gallery Launches Exhibit Amerikulture

The Eric Firestone Gallery in collaboration with Paul Kasmin Gallery is set to launch its new two-part exhibition “Amerikulture” featuring artists Kenny Scharf and Tseng Kwong, starting Friday, July 26th through Sunday, August 11th.

The exhibition illustrates the friendship and interconnected creativity of Scharf and Tseng. “Amerikulture” includes recent paintings by Scharf alongside a selection of photographs by Tseng, which were curated by Scharf. Through painting and photography spanning 30 years, the exhibit presents two artists’ interpretation of Americana, and its symbolic vocabulary. Classic symbols of American consumerism were paired with an underlying subversive edge.

Scharf lived and worked in New York City as a young artist. He was eager to merge the high and lowbrow, the fantastic and the imaginary. Scharf was a pioneer among artists who integrated street culture into the contemporary art mainstream, incorporating pop and comic imagery in his sculpture, installation, and paintings.

Tseng was born in Hong Kong and immigrated Canada as a teenager. He studied art in Paris before moving to New York in 1978. Before his untimely death in 1990, Tseng worked in New York as a conceptual artist producing a prolific body of work in photography.

The Eric Firestone Gallery is located on 4 Newtown Lane in East Hampton. For more information visit ericfirestonegallery.com or call 631-604-2386.