KAWS, born Brian Donnelly, creates bold, bright work that brings together the spheres of fine art and commerce. The name KAWS was originally
his graffiti tag, Donnelly claims “there’s no meaning to it” and he was simply attracted to the arrangement of the letters. His refined comic book
aesthetic clearly derives some of its character from his early graffiti work in its bold colours and lines. His oeuvre reinterprets cartoon figures such
as SpongeBob Square Pants, Mickey Mouse and the Smurfs, characters widely familiar to a vast audience. His work is intended to be accessible to
everyone: “I just want to make stuff that no one is ever too stupid to get.” (KAWS quoted in Cesar Pesari, KAWS Covers Paper Magazine’s November
2013 Art Issue, 6 November, 2013). Having worked briefly for Disney after graduating from the School of Visual Arts in New York, KAWS is well placed
to transform and re-imagine today’s most iconic characters.

KAWS describes his acrylic paintings as “graphic shapes that may or may not recall familiar imagery” (KAWS, www.blouinartinfo.com). The
paintings are not made in a traditional way: he first draws the image by hand, then redraws it on a computer using Adobe Illustrator. The image
is then printed out and projected, from which the final painting is made.

In Projector, the large X that dominates the canvas references his cartoon figures, for which he replaces their eyes with Xs. The image can therefore
be understood as an abstracted version of one of his cartoon characters. The storage of the painting in an acrylic box refers to collectible toys -
KAWS is famed for his plastic toys which, like his paintings, revisit popular characters. By packaging the paintings in such a way, KAWS attempted
to bridge the gap between toys and art. KAWS’s wide-ranging production straddles fine and commercial art, disturbing the traditional hierarchy. For
KAWS, art and product are one and the same. Fine art, therefore, has not been his sole focus, instead his “goal has been just to figure out how to get
through life making stuff.”