KAWS: WHERE THE END STARTS

Photo: Qu Shi Ying

Have you ever seen a man with a pair of elephant’s ears on a shirt before? If you have, you probably have seen the works of KAWS on Uniqlo, a Japanese fashion brand. KAWS' arts, however, is not merely a shirt design, but also a whole exhibition for itself. Now, would you like to start the journey to enjoy the exhibition?

KAWS: Where the end starts, was held in Yuz museum from March 28 to August 13, 2017 in Shanghai, China. A Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneur Budi Tek founded this museum that features Brian Donnelly's, a pop artist also known as KAWS. “To be international you have to put in lots of effort, yet Kaws found the key among countries,” said Tek.

In the exhibition,"Street and Collaborations” represents the early stage of Kaws’ arts. It recounts the stories when he was in school of visual arts where he worked on his assignments during daytime and had fun with adding his own imagery on advertising posters at night. In the end, he became well known and started collaborating with advertising agencies.

Photo: Qu Shi Ying

The second part of this exhibition is painting. CHUM, as the main theme of the exhibition, was a primary vehicle that used by KAWS to move from graffiti to painting. In the exhibition, some of the paintings merge the concept of his art together with the Simpsons. This kind of package paintings was made into his new characters, The Kimpsons. “It was like, ‘you know Homer, I know Homer.’ We might not be able to have a meaningful conversation, but to all of us, it’s still Homer.”

Photo: Qu Shi Ying

Since then, he realized that animation is one of the powerful communication tools among countries. Therefore, KAWS took his work out of the packaging and began to transform his painting to animation as can bee seen in "KURFS", "KAWSBOB" and some of his other work.

Lastly, Sculptures were at the most conspicuous place in the exhibition. “Those sculptures made me think of one of my old friends, they are heart-warming,” said Vicky Zhou, her eyes filling with tears. COMPANION, as mentioned above, is the most recognized figure among all his work and those arts also jointly sponsored with Uniqlo. Here are some of the examples:

Photo: Uniqlo

The exhibition, Where The End Starts, invited people from all over the world to explore the breadth of the artist’s career. “Seeing the works together reveals KAWS’s formal agility as an artist, as well as his underlying wit, irreverence, and affection for our times.”