“I wake up and make what I want to make. It wasn't a decision to stop doing one thing. It was more like becoming obsessed with another.”
KAWS
(b. Jersey City, NJ, 1974)
KAWS, aka Brian Donnelly, creates paintings, drawings, and sculptures that have been widely exhibited in public spaces, museums and art galleries. He is internationally renowned for creating both fine art and highly sought-after, editioned toys, apparel, and other products.
KAWS grew up in Jersey City, where he emerged as a graffiti artist in the early 1990s, tagging surfaces around New York with the letters K A W S on his frequent trips into the city to skateboard. He later studied at the School of Visual Arts (1993-1996), where he shifted his focus to creating public “interventions” by subverting imagery on billboards and advertisements in bus shelters and phone booths. This led to collaborations with commercial photographers and designers, resulting in original artworks that have been extensively published. Today, the artist is considered one of the most relevant artists of his generation partly because he straddles the elite world of fine art and the grungier world of street art and skate culture. His work is instantly recognizable with a common visual vocabulary. Alternating between figuration and abstraction, KAWS’s work reflects the chaotic nature of contemporary culture.
Solo exhibitions for KAWS include: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Brooklyn Museum, New York; CAC Malaga, Spain; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; The Modern Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Connecticut; and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. His work has been shown in the public realm, including ARTZUID outside the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Frieze Sculpture Park, London; and Hong Kong's Harbour City. He has collaborated with international brands including Uniqlo, Comme des Garcons, Nike, Lucas Films, and MTV. He has made cover artwork for a 2015 W Magazine art issue featuring Drake and for Kanye West's 2009 album, 808s and Heartbreak. In addition to clothing and other items, he has made limited edition vinyl toys since the late 1990s, including with Japanese company Medicom Toy and his own company OriginalFake.
KAWS lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
