Galerie Perrotin in New York presents the work of famed Brooklyn-based artist KAWS. For this exhibition, the artist features a series of works where several playful attitudes towards painting converge. Taking from Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, who found their sources in popular culture, and inspired by Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly, who submitted their paintings to a process of abstraction and recomposition that extended to the shape of the canvas (where the canvas borders and depth became relevant), KAWS embraces both worlds of pop and abstraction in a unique whimsical way.

The shape of KAWS’s canvases is not derived from the straight forward abstraction “post-painterly” artists championed but from figuration; they are abstracted cartoon silhouettes not clearly rendered within the pictorial field. Presenting images that seem to have been shaken --spinning smaller fragments of seemingly cartoon mouths, teeth, eyes and silhouettes--, the paintings capture a cartoon whirlwind of parts and portions as they are about to come into existence. Functioning as gateways to the world of popular imagery, cartoons and comics, these cornucopias furnish current sources of reference, which in this century relate to mass media and animated drawings.

Placed within the white cube environment of a gallery space, the works with their shaped canvases interact with each other in unexpected manners. Furthermore, the grouping of the paintings provides a charged environment where humans feel immersed in the leisure world of comics and cartoons. KAWS is not simply introducing popular references, he is forcing the artworld to accept these as part of what for many is the real world they experienced growing up. As he taps into the popular psyche, he brings to life the very points of fascination, endearing memories, tender associations and identifications with the world of cartoons that for many were profound experiences and just as meaningful as those in the real world.

-Galerie Perrotin

Image: © KAWS, Photo: Farzad Owrang, Courtesy Galerie Perrotin