EXHIBITED:
KAWS．Ups And Downs, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art,Kansas, October 25, 2013 – February 16, 2014 (large sculpture)
A Shared Space: KAWS, Karl Wirsum, and Tomoo Gokita, NewcombArt Museum at Tulane University, New Orleans, September 9, 2015 –January 3, 2016 (large sculpture)

KAWS (Brian Donnelly )

KAWS, a Brooklyn-based artist, has created a prolific body of influential work under the Pop Art tradition. The artist’s wide-ranging practices include graphics, paintings, product design, murals and large-scale sculptures. The artist’s large, bright and graphical canvases immaculately rendered in acrylic paint and monumental large-scale fiberglass, bronze, aluminum and wood sculptures often exhibits many replicating imageries that surpass the realms and boundaries of linguistics and culture that transpires between art and commercial design. In retrospect, Brian Donnelly is a native of New Jersey, commonly known as KAWS, whose talent was manifested in the form of graffiti through his passion for skateboard growing up in Jersey City, where he would frequently adorned freight-trains and walls with the pseudonym KAWS as he has a liking for how the formation of these letters worked together cohesively. Upon his graduation from secondary school in 1992, he began to subvert imagery on billboards and public advertisements, he would utilized acrylic paint with no visible brushstrokes in attempts to make his additions appears seamlessly as part of the original advertisement. The artist designed his first vinyl toy Companion in 1999 with Japanese apparel Bounty Hunter and began to make editions as artists such as Tom Wassermann and Claes Oldenburg greatly inspired him at the time. This initial venture garnered much attention in the global art toy community, his prevalence in the commercial sector fostered subsequent collaborations with other labels such as A Bathing Ape, Undercover, Medicom, Santastic in the East and household commercial giants such as Nike, Supreme, Kiehl’s cosmetics, Hennessy and Marc Jacobs from the West.

Alongside the more commercial sector, KAWS portrayed his passion for painting on large canvases and paintings. The present lot Untitled Camo Skulls portrays his trademark figure with its soft skull crossbones and crossed-out eyes. These unique attributes became a trademark of the artist as these characters gain a life of its own. KAWS engages in a playful interplay with colors as the earthy neutral shades of the cross-eyes head stands out against the lightness of the background. The significance is widespread particularly in mainstream media as the artist continues to collaborate with influential figures of the pop-culture such as Pharrell Williams on his perfume bottle Girl the singer had created in junction with Commes des Garcons in celebration of his solo album. The artist has also designed the cover art for recording artist Kayne West’s album 808s & Heartbreak. Furthermore, KAWS’ appropriation of iconic characters from comic books and popular culture are manifested in some of works where predominant American cartoons are subverted into his own artistic productions. KAWS reasons that I found it weird how infused a cartoon could become in people's lives; the impact it could have, compared to regular politics. A reworked of other iconic characters that became the central characters in KAWS’ paintings include the Smurf, Sponge Bob Square Pants, the Michelin Man and Mickey Mouse. KAWS’ unique artistic approach deliberately blurs the boundaries between art, design and product. KAWS regularly exhibits in museums and galleries worldwide. The artist has exhibited in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Harbor City in Hong Kong, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Gallery Perrotin in Paris, New York and Hong Kong and the Honor Fraser Gallery just to name a few. KAWS works are currently in public collections such as the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, the Zabludowicz Collection and the Rosenbaum Collection.