Mary Boone Gallery, in cooperation with Galerie Perrotin, will open at its Chelsea location an exhibition of monumental sculpture and new paintings by KAWS.

KAWS’s signature COMPANION figure appears in two new sculptures fabricated in wood – each over eighteen feet high – that rise to the ceiling of the soaring skylit space. In ALONG THE WAY, a pair of the figures, heads lowered and one arm on each other’s back, embrace in a pose of gentle solace. The other work, AT THIS TIME, presents Companion standing alone with head arched back and hands covering the eyes. The posture at once conveys a reluctance to face the world and a withdrawal from what has already been witnessed.

Three eight-foot tondo paintings that complete the exhibition reveal KAWS’s distinctive mode of advancing the bold colors and streamlined iconography of Pop art. While the dynamic shapes suggest close-ups of the plump hands, X’d eyes, and crossbone ears of the figures, the close cropping of the images allows the paintings to vacillate between figuration and abstraction.

Concurrent with the show at Mary Boone Gallery, KAWS will have new work on view at Galerie Perrotin, New York; The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas.

*image (left)
courtesy of the artist, Mary Boon Gallery, and Galerie Perrotin