KAWS - Evening & Day Editions London Wednesday, January 18, 2023 | Phillips
  • “If you look at something but then you know what it is, is it still abstraction? You just start looking at the gestures and how they work and thinking about the history of painting and how it can relate to that”
    —KAWS

    After 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, stripping them of comforting familiarity. The result is entirely new entities infused with a witty contemporary discourse depicted in neon colours that demand attention.

     

    In NO REPLY, the artist crops into his beloved characters’ features, showing only portions of their faces and hands. By including his X-shaped eyes in nine of the ten prints, KAWS ensures that even the most abstract designs are recognizable. While only segments of each character are visible, the vibrant colours and cropped compositions pulsate with energy and movement, as if the figures are attempting to escape their frames.

    • Artist Biography

      KAWS

      American • 1974

      To understand the work of KAWS is to understand his roots in the skateboard and graffiti crews of New York City. Brian Donnelly chose KAWS as his moniker to tag city streets beginning in the 1990s, and quickly became a celebrated standout in the scene. Having swapped spray paint for explorations in fine art spanning sculpture, painting and collage, KAWS has maintained a fascination with classic cartoons, including Garfield, SpongeBob SquarePants and The Simpsons, and reconfigured familiar subjects into a world of fantasy. 

      Perhaps he is most known for his larger-than-life fiberglass sculptures that supplant the body of Mickey Mouse onto KAWS' own imagined creatures, often with 'x'-ed out eyes or ultra-animated features. However, KAWS also works frequently in neon and vivid paint, adding animation and depth to contemporary paintings filled with approachable imagination. There is mass appeal to KAWS, who exhibits globally and most frequently in Asia, Europe and the United States.  

      View More Works

93

NO REPLY

2015
The complete set of ten screenprints in colours, on wove paper, the full sheets, with the original blue fabric-covered portfolio with embossed title.
all S. 88.8 x 58.4 cm (34 7/8 x 22 7/8 in.)
All signed, dated and numbered 51/100 in pencil (there were also 20 artist's proofs), published by Pace Editions, New York, all framed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
£50,000 - 70,000 

Sold for £75,600

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T +44 207 318 4075
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Anne Schneider-Wilson
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Evening & Day Editions

London Auction 18 - 19 January 2023