World-renowned artist KAWS will host his first Canadian exhibition in Toronto at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) on Wednesday.
KAWS, formally known as American artist Brian Donnelly, will be bringing KAWS: Family to the city for the very first time. The Brooklyn-based artist is notable for having a cult following for his uniquely distinctive designs, clothing, and works in pop culture.
“Renowned for his larger-than-life sculptures and paintings of iconic characters steeped in the American zeitgeist, KAWS mines popular culture to produce meticulous and exuberant artworks that investigate our connection to objects and one another,” the museum said in a statement in May.
The exhibit is curated by Julian Cox, the AGO’s deputy director and chief curator, and features over 75 pieces of art from the past two decades.
KAWS: Family is organized as a series of encounters, with families of related artworks installed across the museum. This includes wall murals, sketches, paintings, larger-than-life wood sculptures, augmented reality installations, product collaborations and altered phone booth advertisements.
“KAWS reminds us that art can be many things at once – priceless, useful, commercial, beautiful, familiar, thought provoking and funny. Like Warhol and Haring before him, KAWS welcomes the viewer with forms that are immediately identifiable, and having caught our attention, confounds with his nuance, pathos and technical skill, encouraging us to consider what is companionship, what is family, what is our relationship to objects,” Cox said in a media release.
KAWS’ art uses various elements such as bronze, wood, paper and canvas, plush toys and stainless steel. The exhibit also includes his signature figures which were inspired by popular American cartoons and collectable toys. The four figures, representing a nuclear family, are meant to be seen as both playful and serious in their various poses, forms and sizes, and hopes to evoke human emotions.
“The centerpiece of the exhibition is FAMILY (2021), a painted bronze sculpture featuring COMPANION, a figure with crossed out eyes inspired by early American rubber hose animations, a bulbous figure named CHUM and a fur-covered character named BFF, posed together in the style of a studio portrait,” the AGO described.
Alongside the exhibit will be a selection of shoe designs, cereal boxes, album covers and a loveseat composed of plush toys made in collaboration with the Campana Brothers. This is aimed to showcase KAWS and his involvement with both commercial design and fashion brands.
“Rejecting the idea that art is limited to the museum, these mass produced works share the same dedication to bold colour, strong lines, and adaptation that his paintings and sculptures do, and have helped KAWS gain a large and dedicated global following,” the museum explained.
In the past, KAWS’ art has been showcased throughout the United States and internationally, but it has never made its debut in Canada until now.
KAWS: Family opens on Sept. 27 until March 21, 2024.
