KAWS
“What Party”
New York, 200 Eastern Parkway Brooklyn
The Brooklyn Museum is the first New York institution to present a sweeping survey of KAWS’s career, from his roots as a graffiti artist to a dominating force in the contemporary art world, tracing common themes in the Brooklyn-based artist’s practice. Renowned for his paintings and sculptures of pop culture–inspired characters, as well as his playful use of abstraction and his meticulous execution, KAWS bridges the worlds of art, popular culture, and commerce while investigating our connection to objects and to one another. With a practice formed outside of orthodox art-world channels and rooted in graffiti art, drawing, and animation, KAWS has expanded access to his art by allowing the general public to purchase editions of his work and to interact with it digitally. KAWS: WHAT PARTY highlights a range of works from the artist’s diverse career, including drawings, paintings, bronze sculptures, smaller objects, furniture, and monumental wooden sculptures of the beloved COMPANION character, as well as a selection of new and existing works that have never been publicly displayed. Throughout the exhibition, visitors will be invited to directly engage with KAWS’s work through Acute Art, an augmented reality app the artist has partnered with. In conjunction with KAWS: WHAT PARTY, a towering new sculpture by the artist will also be installed at Rockefeller Center’s historic plaza in summer 2021.
KAWS (American, born 1974). UNTITLED (KAWS), 1994. Pencil and ink on paper, 8 1/4 × 12 in. (20.9 × 30.5 cm). © KAWS. (Photo: Farzad Owrang)
“The Brooklyn Museum and KAWS have been working together since 2015, and we’re excited to further that relationship by presenting his first mid-career survey in the U.S.,” says Eugenie Tsai, John and Barbara Vogelstein Senior Curator, Contemporary Art, Brooklyn Museum, and curator of KAWS: WHAT PARTY. “While participating in a cultural environment shaped by image and consumption, KAWS simultaneously emphasizes the constant presence of universal emotions in his work, such as love, friendship, loneliness, and alienation—an emphasis that is now more important and relevant than ever before.”
KAWS: WHAT PARTY highlights five overarching tenets of the artist’s evolving artistic practice. The first section brings together examples of KAWS’s earliest work, including graffiti drawings and notebooks from the early 1990s, on view for the first time in the United States. These works are accompanied by the artist’s early-career altered bus shelter and phone booth advertisements, which first brought him notoriety, as well as a collection of multimedia works that provide glimpses into his studio practice.
KAWS (American, born 1974). UNTITLED (HARING), 1997. Acrylic on existing advertising poster, 68 × 48 in. (172.7 × 121.9 cm). © KAWS. (Photo: Farzad Owrang)
The second section focuses on the artist’s appropriation, alteration, and abstraction of characters from popular American cartoons, and includes a selection of shaped canvases featuring characters like the KIMPSONS and KAWSBOB. By extracting details from iconic cartoon figures and placing them at the fore, KAWS masterfully explores line, color, and composition to convey a sense of experimentation, exuberance, and play. KAWS’s work often exudes overtones of childlike innocence while simultaneously retaining underlying, subtly menacing themes of transgression and subversion commonly found in many of his public installations.
The third section consists of all new work addressing the current social climate. Featured is a series of paintings and a grand, introspective sculpture, evoking ubiquitous feelings of sadness, grief, anxiety, and isolation.
KAWS (American, born 1974). KAWSBOB 3, 2007. Acrylic on canvas, 72 × 96 in. (182.9 × 243.8 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Pharrell Williams. © KAWS
KAWS’s new works speak powerfully to the isolation, fears, and grief of our times,” says Anne Pasternak, Shelby White and Leon Levy Director, Brooklyn Museum. “It reminds us that there’s a universality to our suffering.”
KAWS (American, born 1974). NEW MORNING, 2012. Acrylic on canvas over panel, 2 parts, each: 72 × 45 in. (182.9 × 114.3 cm). © KAWS
In the fourth section, visitors enter a corridor highlighting KAWS’s collaborations with other designers and brands in fashion and industrial design. A wide selection of preparatory sketches and furniture, produced together with the Brazilian design studio Campana Brothers, as well as toys and other products, showcases the artist’s exploration of other creative industries as a way to expand both his artistic practice and the public’s access to his work. By working with commercial industries to create products on a larger scale, KAWS continues to blur the boundary between populist and elite art, departing from the established notion that fine art must be exclusive or one of a kind. This accessibility, in turn, has gained the artist a large and dedicated global following.
