Arty Party: Kenny Scharf's Cosmic Cavern Freak-Fests

Back in 1981, pop artist Kenny Scharf was living in a dilapidated 1840s-era townhouse near Times Square with Keith Haring. One day when cleaning out his closet, he discovered a secret back room attached to it. "I got a blacklight and started finding trash I liked from the street, painting it fluorescent--and then came the parties." Throughout the decade, he threw parties there with the Club 57 gang (Haring, John Sex, Ann Magnuson and co.) , and the party was called "The Closet" because it was, well, in one. After a 15-odd year respite (Scharf moved to Miami and then L.A.), he's back in New York, and so is the party.

Since April, Scharf and his party-thrower-in-crime, artist Scott Ewalt, have been hosting epic all-nighters in the basement of Scharf's studio on an unassuming stretch of Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg, known as the "Cosmic Cavern." The party room is strewn with a jarring assortment of Day-Glo-painted junk (from dollhouses to bed frames to telephones), some of it left over from Scharf's "Closet" days, and is a cross between a haunted house, an insane asylum and Pee-Wee's Playhouse. Immediately upon entering, guests are greeted by Scharf, who slathers their faces with face-paint. "I'm kind of the entertainment," he says. Carlo McCormick, who wrote the introduction to Scharf's recently-released book published by Rizzoli, describes the scene: "In the midst of this mad tripped-out assemblage that's like Kurt Schwitters on acid, where the kids come to dance the night away as if, well, it's 1984, there's Scharf, a gawky Peter Pan doing some shamanic shag-watusi-twist. They just don't make freaks like that anymore." Themes have ranged from "past/future" to "Flinstones/Jetsons," and they're throwing a party on Halloween. But, says Scharf, "they are always basically just plain stupid fun with a lot of dance dance dance!" Alexis Swerdloff
Photographs by Ves Pitts and Satori

Cosmic Cavern, 993A Metropolitan Ave.

ARTY PARTY: KENNY SCHARF | RYAN McGINLEY | COLLECTIVE HARDWARE