Fri May 18, 2012
KAWS, Again and Again, 2008, Acrylic on canvas, 68 x 68 inches,
Image courtesy of Gering & López Gallery, New York.
KAWS: Reshaping the Urban Landscape
By Julie Bills, New York – November 2009
KAWS’ artistic agenda seems bound by irreconcilable contradictions. Often referred to as an “Outsider” artist – a term loaded with a troublingly obscure definition – KAWS is an enigmatic figure who does not fit any of the “Outsider” preconditions – unlike Dubuffet, Darger, Kusama, and Basquiat who despite their divergent backgrounds, their distinctive bodies of work do not fit into the typical categorizations of the artistic canon.
Coming from an Irish, middle class family in Jersey City, KAWS received his BA from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 1996. His background places him quite comfortably in the core societal zone. But what encourages people to consider KAWS an Outsider is that he first made a name for himself on the streets, an origin similar to Keith Haring, Basquiat, and Banksy.
In the 1990s, KAWS received a skeleton key from a fellow artist that unlocked the bus shelters around the city. KAWS removed commercial advertisements from brands that he admired, painted his own iconography of Pop inspired characters on top of them, and then reinstalled the posters. We refer to these pieces as “subversive,” or we call them “interventions,” but the art that KAWS placed on top of the advertising graphics is in no way overtly political. It seems to beg the question of what the artist was really subverting, since most pieces appear to be celebratory of a designer.
As he gained notoriety, KAWS moved on to work in the design realm, collaborating on clothing lines with such labels as A Bathing Ape, Nike, Comme des Garçons, Marc Jacobs, and Levi’s in addition to opening his own shop in Tokyo, OriginalFake. KAWS also designs and releases limited edition vinyl toys collected by a slice of the urban culture. These toys usually sell out within minutes when they are released online, and lines stretch for several city blocks when they are available in stores.
In the fall of 2008, KAWS had his first major New York solo exhibition at Gering & López Gallery, featuring sculpture and painting that was undeniably in the “Pop” category of contemporary art. Extreme close-ups of KAWS’ character KAWSBOB, a riff on the American television cartoon character SpongeBob, dominated most of the imagery of these works.
KAWS leaves his signature mark on each image, Xs over the character’s eyes, but the works are painted in a smooth acrylic paint with a clean sense of color, line, and design. KAWS has also had solo fine art exhibitions in Miami and Los Angeles, participated in group exhibitions extensively on the international scale, and will have his first solo museum exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 2010.
Additionally, KAWS designed a limited edition cover for the Kanye West album 808s and Heartbreak. KAWS was featured on the cover of several international magazines, including New York Magazine, i-D, Jalouse, Eyescream, Complex, and Nylon.
From this list of accomplishments, not to mention the significant amount of critical acclaim the artist has received, it would seem that KAWS is a burgeoning Art Star with massive commercial success, not an Outsider. Yet intricately and subtly, this is all part of KAWS’ artistic agenda.
The Pop imagery of KAWS’ art seems to function on a tertiary, superficial level. Instead, the real content of his artistic practice is a commentary on space. Since his graffiti days, KAWS has infiltrated the dominant iconographic landscape of capitalism, infusing it with his own visual language. This act did not critique the advertisements or the corporations that create them directly; it instead disrupted the power dynamic between 20-something visual consumer and global advertising agency. The early intervention works allowed KAWS to carve out a space within the urban landscape in which an individual could be seen, instead of the monetarily dominant trend regime of the moment.
In recent years, KAWS has taken this mission to re-appropriate space for Outsider groups to the highest levels. He has done this through his collaborations with Hip-hop artists, a once marginalized group in the early 90s, by participating in the creation of enormous billboards in Times Square proclaiming the acceptance and desirability of this genre to the general public.
KAWS has always functioned in a kind of liminal space, going inside and outside various institutions, reclaiming what ought to be a shared realm for those that are not in control. This gives those with less power (ie the youth, minorities, disenfranchised artists, etc) a sense of participation in the public sphere. There is a distinctly anti-gentrification element to KAWS’ practice. The fact that he is opening up public space by subverting power dynamics on a multitude of levels might account for his seemingly universal appeal.
This interpretation resolves the discrepancies one might notice in an “Outsider” artist that now works with Marc Jacobs. KAWS’ tactic of infiltrating urban space has reached a huge international audience, and it’s quite likely he will only continue to broaden the scope of his project in the future.
By Julie Bills, New York
KAWS: Reshaping the Urban Landscape
KAWS’ artistic agenda seems bound by irreconcilable contradictions. He is often referred to as an “Outsider” artist, a term loaded with a troublingly obscure definition. Outsider artists that fit the standard label like Dubuffet, Darger, Kusama, and Basquiat have greatly divergent backgrounds and produce work with entirely different content, but they all have some quality that links them to a peripheral societal zone.
Whether it is a deficiency in formal training, a severely eccentric perception of the world, or complete lack of notoriety during their lifetimes, these Outsiders are loosely grouped by an inability to neatly fit into the typical categorizations of the artistic canon.
Although he is an enigmatic figure, KAWS does not fit any of the “Outsider” preconditions. Coming from an Irish, middle class family in Jersey City, KAWS received his BA from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in 1996. His background places him quite comfortably in the core societal zone. What encourages people to consider KAWS an Outsider is that he first made a name for himself on the streets, an origin similar to Keith Haring, Basquiat, and Banksy.
In the 1990s, KAWS received a skeleton key from a fellow artist that unlocked the bus shelters around the city. KAWS removed commercial advertisements from brands that he admired, painted his own iconography of Pop inspired characters on top of them, and then reinstalled the posters. We refer to these pieces as “subversive,” or we call them “interventions,” but the art that KAWS placed on top of the advertising graphics is in no way overtly political. It seems to beg the question of what the artist was really subverting, since most pieces appear to be celebratory of a designer.
As he gained notoriety, KAWS moved on to work in the design realm, collaborating on clothing lines with such labels as A Bathing Ape, Nike, Comme des Garçons, Marc Jacobs, and Levi’s in addition to opening his own shop in Tokyo, OriginalFake. KAWS also designs and releases limited edition vinyl toys collected by a slice of the urban culture. These toys usually sell out within minutes when they are released online, and lines stretch for several city blocks when they are available in stores.
In the fall of 2008, KAWS had his first major New York solo exhibition at Gering & López Gallery, featuring sculpture and painting that was undeniably in the “Pop” category of contemporary art. Extreme close-ups of KAWS’ character KAWSBOB, a riff on the American television cartoon character SpongeBob, dominated most of the imagery of these works. KAWS leaves his signature mark on each image, Xs over the character’s eyes, but the works are painted in a smooth acrylic paint with a clean sense of color, line, and design. KAWS has also had solo fine art exhibitions in Miami and Los Angeles, participated in group exhibitions extensively on the international scale, and will have his first solo museum exhibition at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in 2010.
Additionally, KAWS designed a limited edition cover for the Kanye West album 808s and Heartbreak. KAWS was featured on the cover of several international magazines, including New York Magazine, i-D, Jalouse, Eyescream, Complex, and Nylon.
From this list of accomplishments, not to mention the significant amount of critical acclaim the artist has received, it would seem that KAWS is a burgeoning Art Star with massive commercial success, not an Outsider. Yet intricately and subtly, this is all part of KAWS’ artistic agenda.
The Pop imagery of KAWS’ art seems to function on a tertiary, superficial level. Instead, the real content of his artistic practice is a commentary on space. Since his graffiti days, KAWS has infiltrated the dominant iconographic landscape of capitalism, infusing it with his own visual language. This act did not critique the advertisements or the corporations that create them directly; it instead disrupted the power dynamic between twenty-something visual consumer and global advertising agency. The early intervention works allowed KAWS to carve out a space within the urban landscape in which an individual could be seen, instead of the monetarily dominant trend regime of the moment.
In recent years, KAWS has taken this mission to reappropriate space for outsider groups to the highest levels. He has done this through his collaborations with Hip-hop artists, a once marginalized group in the early 90s, by participating in the creation of enormous billboards in Times Square proclaiming the acceptance and desirability of this genre to the general public.
KAWS has always functioned in a kind of liminal space, going inside and outside various institutions, reclaiming what ought to be a shared realm for those that are not in control. This gives those with less power (ie the youth, minorities, disenfranchised artists, etc) a sense of participation in the public sphere. There is a distinctly anti-gentrification element to KAWS’ practice. The fact that he is opening up public space by subverting power dynamics on a multitude of levels might account for his seemingly universal appeal.
This interpretation resolves the discrepancies one might notice in an “Outsider” artist that now works with Marc Jacobs. KAWS’ tactic of infiltrating urban space has reached a huge international audience, and it’s quite likely think he will only continue to broaden the scope of his project in the future.
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