KAWS. Art & Comix explores the interplay between comics, comic strips, cartoons, and fine art. This presentation places the American artist KAWS in dialog with selected contemporary stances with a focus on the artistic autonomy of his characters, who unite characteristics of pop, commercial, and public art. KAWS started out as a graffiti artist during the 1990s, whose practice evolved to overpainting posters and advertisements displayed in public; in doing so, his trademark strategy was to cover the models’ faces with a stylized skull and crossbones. He is especially well known for his larger-than-life figurative sculptures—frequently realized in varied materials from bronze, to wood, to inflatables—in the public realm. His COMPANIONs and ACCOMPLICEs, as he calls some of them, exhibit self-confident, shy, or sad demeanors. Sometimes they hug each other and other times they just sit there alone, covering their faces with their hands as if ashamed. They frequently appear alone, isolated and melancholy, though one also encounters them in groups or even as families.
