“Do you know that series of package paintings that I did? That was because I saw that these guys in Japan were collecting toys. I had friends that were spending $3,000 on a Star Wars prototype figure. They weren’t collecting art, they were collecting toys. So I did those package paintings where I mass-produced the packaging around the painting, but the painting itself was done individually. That was my way of bridging the gap between those two worlds. Because I realized that these guys are absolute connoisseurs of the stuff they collect. They can look at a toy and say, Oh, this is a 76. It came out in three versions. It occurred to me that that kind of obsessive collecting isn’t any different than art.”
(KAWS, quoted in Tobey Maguire, ‘KAWS’, Interview Magazine, 27 April 2010, online)

A few of the first 40 package paintings ever created for the 2003 Original Fake exhibition at the BAPE Gallery in Tokyo, these works were inspired by Japan’s toy collecting scene – KAWS’ unique attempt to bridge the gap between the toy and art collecting realms. Whilst the plastic packaging was mass-produced, each painting was created individually, reflecting on how similar toy collectors were to their art counterparts in seeing value in items produced in limited quantities.

Reinterpreting recognisable characters from popular culture with his signature skull and crossed eyes, the CHUM character is also one of the KAWS’s oldest and most iconic characters. Having been exhibited by NIGO (founder of A Bathing Ape, one of the most notorious names in Japanese street fashion in the 90s) also highlights how the artist emerged from an urban streetwear and commercial culture into art in the same way the packaged painting was conceptualised.