“You know, I think it’s more of the visceral feelings of cartoons, the flat colours, that I relate to.”
—KAWSAfter his graduation from the School of Visual Arts in New York, KAWS started his creative career working for Jumbo Pictures as an animator, painting backgrounds for Disney’s animated series. While thriving in this artistic environment, the artist chased creative liberty and the freedom to produce his own work. Like his predecessors Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, KAWS turned to his urban surroundings and filled the streets of New York City with his own graffiti in the 1990s. It was here that he developed his unique visual lexicon and formed the signature symbols for which he is so well-known today.
Reworking advertisements with over-painting and spray-painting, and drawing from the nostalgia of cherished cartoon heroes and their universal cultural value, KAWS created his most well-known characters: Companion and Bendy, as well as his signature ‘XX’ trademark. In designing his own era-specific cartoons, KAWS magnifies and distorts animated portraits, abstracting them and stripping them of comforting familiarity. The result is entirely new entities infused with a witty contemporary discourse depicted in neon colours that demand attention.
“Abstraction always interested me, […] probably because it relates to design logos, and, in a very basic way, animation. Drawing itself is an abstract process until it becomes something recognisable.”
—KAWSIn UPS AND DOWNS, the artist crops into his beloved characters’ features, showing only close-cropped portions of their faces and hands. Amongst the abstract form, the X-shaped eyes that feature in nine of the ten prints, staring directly at the viewer, ensure that the figures remain recognisable. The cartoonish forms and neon pinks, yellows and oranges convey an intense energy, as though the figures are seeking to escape their frames. UPS AND DOWNS was published on the occasion of KAWS’ eponymous exhibition at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, in 2013.
