PARIS.- After a first Keith Haring exhibition in 2011, Taglialatella Gallery honors for the second time the father of the "Radiant Baby", one of its leading artist, with a new exhibition entitled "Keith Haring & Friends."

This exhibition is organized concomitantly to the current major retrospective of the artist at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris based on the political aspect of his artistic approach.

The gallery endeavours to immerse the spectator into the world of the 80s in New York City and to gather around the work of Keith Haring some artworks of his contemporaries and friends such as Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat or Kenny Scharf.

The will is to spotlight the accessible dimension of his approach with the presentation of his subway drawings, limited edition prints and drawings, all representative of his pop world, and to highlight points of mutual interest with his contemporaries. Indeed, all these artists and friends, driven by a boundless energy and an insatiable curiosity, have spread out their works in the New York of the 1980s and created, in the line of their “spiritual father” Andy Warhol, a connection between the world of contemporary art and the one of popular culture, especially through gathering places and graffiti.

Art is for everybody
Keith Haring paints, draws and sculpts with untraditional materials. His first concern is to make art accessible by the expression, by the medias and by the means used. He specifically takes possession of the vacant advertising spaces in the subway stations with his famous Subway Drawings.

“The public has the right to art. The public has been ignored by most contemporary artists. The public needs art – and it is the responsibility of a ‘self-proclamed artist’ to realize that the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for a few and ignore the masses. Art is for everybody.” Keith Haring, Journals op. cit. p.17

As Keith Haring’s, Scharf’s and Basquiat’s works interested themselves in life in all its forms. If at first sight their works seem childish and naive, they are in fact full of symbols and really deep messages. Behind their sparkling appearance, Keith Haring’s works as well as Scharf’s and Basquiat’s ones invite their contemporaries to reflection. By using an easily identifiable imagery, these artists go beyond a mere depiction; they shake up the convention and appeal to the viewer’s sensitivity. Through the symbols of popular culture, they have created an art combining both, humor and enthusiasm, strength and anguish. Keith Haring and his "friends" are artists anchored in harsh reality.