art + objets d'arts + photography

Scooter LaForge is a full-time artist living in New York City. He has recently collaborated with Belgian fashion designer Walter Van Bierendonck, supplying 20 paintings as images to be incorporated into the fabric of his menswear line. He worked in conjunction with Norwegian painter Bjarne Melgaard in the creation of sculptures for an exhibit. LaForge was chosen to be a keynote speaker at the Montreal Fashion & Design Festival, and presented a solo show at the Galerie MX in the same city.

LaForge has commissioned garments for various high-profile performers including Madonna, Beyoncé, and Debbie Harry. LaForge was also commissioned to provide art for an installation at Commes des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo’s Dover Street Market fashion retail and concept store. The space featured his sculptures as well as garments incorporating painting. Artforum, Vogue, Vogue Italia, Vogue Ukraine, V Magazine, T Magazine, W Magazine, Billboard and Spirit & Flesh are among the publications that have recently featured LaForge’s art.

In 2015, he was featured in shows at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in New York, the Friedrichshof Museum in Vienna, and the Spiritmuseum/Absolut Art Collection in Sweden. LaForge’s previous solo show, How to Create a Monsterpiece, shown at the Howl! Happening Gallery in New York, was included on Autre’s list of top ten exhibits of 2015.

Courtesy of the Artist

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“Once something exists, you cannot deny its existence, regardless of whether you like it or not.” – Scooter Laforge In the city that never sleeps, in a little studio on the Lower East Side, artist Scooter Laforge creates his pop culture and cartoon world, only to be described as masterpieces. Scooter began his love affair with art at a very young age, growing up in the small town of Las Curces, New Mexico. His burning desire to render things beautifully began with his singer/song writer mother, and his landscape painting father, that both equally inspired his creativity and lust for art. Scooter received a painting degree at the University of Arizona, and then moved to San Francisco where he tried to find his voice as an artist. After building an impressive painting career in the Tenderloin section of San Francisco, Scooter packed his bags and headed to his next adventure; New York, where he won a fellowship to Cooper Union School of Art. After finishing his studies at Cooper Union on a special scholarship, Scooter made a promise to himself: to use his work as a “confessional” to the life that he lives. This voice was inspired by and developed when he came to terms with who he was in life. As a result, in 2006, his art shifted from a traditional subject matter to an extremely honest perspective. Scooter’s work can be characterized as Pop Art partnered with abstract expressionism and Dutch classicism. His paintings and drawings are portraitures, landscapes, and objective subject matter, utilizing his special painting techniques and incorporating his homoerotic, in your face, non-apologetic lifestyle. Golden books on acid, his paintings employ a 50’s illustrated story book technique, modernized by 70’s color pallets and are influenced heavily by gay pornography, cute fluffy animals, and sometimes iconic cartoons (i.e. SpongeBob Square pants, The Cookie Monster, and Popeye and Brutis) which are reoccurring characters and themes within his work. His sculptures are a derivative of his successful clothing, t-shirt and underwear line, sold exclusively at Patricia Field, East Village, NYC. His sculptures are self imagined 6-foot tall “T-Shirt Monsters,” that are hand tooled from the exact t-shirts that he makes for sale and are a permanent instillation at Barney’s New York Flagship store. His projects have been showcased at numerous galleries around the Big Apple, such as Exit Art, Wooster Projects White Columns, Feature Inc. and Bucheon to name a few. Scooter’s self- entitled t-shirt collection has been collected by Iggy Pop, Sandra Bernhard, Perez Hilton and can be seen on many characters on the day time soap opera, The Guiding Light. Scooter has been selected to feature his work in the London Biennale opening at the Christopher Henry Gallery. Currently, Scooter LaForge resides in the East Village and works from his painting studio on the Lower East Side where he is working on his collaboration with the Nasty Pig, the art he will be showcasing at the Castro Street Fair in San Francisco and his contribution to the London Biennale’s NYC satellite show.

https://www.artspace.com/artist/scooter_laforge

https://www.saatchiart.com/scooterlaforge

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamlehrer/2015/08/04/artist-scooter-laforge-has-found-a-new-art-medium-in-clothing-taking-his-career-to-new-heights/#54055d347f6a

https://www.artsy.net/artist/scooter-laforge

Scooter LaForge