The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum Kaws Companion (Passing Through) exhibition brochure

KAWS

KAWS: Companion (Passing Through) January 30 to June 5, 2011 The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

KAWS: Companion (Passing Through)

Companion (Passing Through) is an outdoor project by Brooklyn-based artist Brian Donnelly, a.k.a. KAWS, who had his first solo museum exhibition at The Aldrich in 2010. On this occasion, KAWS presents a more than sixteen-foot-high sculpture of his Companion, sitting down with both gloved hands covering its face.

KAWS introduced the famous Companion in 1999. The seven and three-quarter inch limited edition toy featured the signature KAWS inflated skull and crossbones, with a 1 skinny-legged Mickey Mouse body. KAWS’s selection of Mickey Mouse was the result of a search for the most recognizable and international character in the cartoon world to “take down” and his interest in challenging its assertive body posture. Since then, the Companion has been growing in scale.

The second incarnation was a thirteen-inch limited edition toy launched five years later in 2004. This edition showed the passage of time; the Companion had gained weight and looked somewhat tired. In 2006 the artist presented the thirteen-inch Companion (OriginalFake) a dissected version, with one side cut away to expose its interior organs.

2 A unique dissected Companion, standing almost ten feet tall, welcomes visitors to the 3 artist’s own OriginalFake design store in Japan. In 2007, the Companion grew to a four-foot-high version, which was followed in 2009 by a Companion (OriginalFake) that was also four feet tall. The Companion (Passing Through) reads as his most ambitious version, even though it was actually made prior to the last Companion revealed to date, which was presented by KAWS at a recent art exhibition in Paris.4

Companion, 1999 Vinyl. Black colorway Approximately 7 ¾ inches high Courtesy of the artist

Several permutations of the Companion exist as a result of collaborations with other artists. They include the rotting and deteriorating Companion (Pushead version) from

Companion (Five Years Later), 2004 Vinyl. Brown colorway Approximately 13 inches high Courtesy of the artist

2005, the sleek and robotic-looking chrome No Future Companion (Collaboration 5 with Hajime Sorayama) from 2008, and various others. In 2010, the most recent collaboration, with artist Robert Lazzarini, celebrated the tenth anniversary of the Companion. The result was a distorted and incredibly dynamic Companion that seems to be either dancing or affected by a terrible disease.

Why does KAWS keep revisiting the Companion? For him, these characters—and others like the Accomplice and the Chum—are almost family members. As the artist navigates through life, feels happy, strong, tired, or overwhelmed, so do these creations; they will age and transform with him, and each time they will reveal something slightly different, making them unique to the time they were created. Yet, by producing the same exact character on different scales, KAWS is eroding the separation between a commercial product—a thirteen-inch toy—and an artwork—a sixteen-foot sculpture.

Is the change in scale enough to relegate one output to commercial product and the other to art product? Not to his mind.

Also, repeating a character over and over again, just as Keith Haring did before KAWS, only makes it more relevant—a very clear statement—and as Lucy Lippard argues, an 6 insistent emphasis on a single object takes discipline. It is not easy to strip down a statement to its minimum, keep the composition simple, and maintain its intellectual complexity, over and over again. Let’s also remember Warhol’s Flowers exhibition in 1965, where the whole presentation showed only variations of the same image.

Not only does KAWS approach the two outputs (limited editions and sculpture) with the same dedication and without the distinction that one counts as art and the other may not, but for the viewer also, this separation is irrelevant and somewhat arbitrary.

As viewers, we enjoy both Companions equally, even if their different sizes encourage different corporeal relationships to them. For example, our relationship is more intimate with the limited edition toy that we can hold in our hands, play with, and caress.

The sculptural Companion makes us feel small, we could fit in its hands—perhaps it will play with us—we feel more aware of our humble human condition, even if the Companion seems inoffensive; additionally, in the museum we cannot touch the sculpture. This reversal of power with regard to who is dominant in our toy or sculpture relationship is not only incredibly compelling, but also very telling of both systems. As consumers of commercial products we are seemingly in control; as viewers in the art world we feel to some degree insignificant, perhaps even oppressed. However, the 2007 and 2009 four-foot Companions and Companions (OriginalFake), with their size and 7 vinyl material, straddle both worlds and are the perfect hybrids. Large enough for us to not immediately recognize them as toy editions, we relate to them very differently.

We are intrigued, amused, and want to communicate with this quiet character that seems so familiar. The scale allows for a one-to-one relationship and we feel compelled to embrace them, just as we embrace anyone with whom we feel we have something in common, and yet there are enough differences for us to learn from them.

Like most Pop artists before him, from Warhol to Oldenburg—both illustrators who also had backgrounds in commercial art—KAWS contributes to the blurring of the boundary between art and commerce by using the visual strength of commercial prod8 ucts for his artwork. The Companion (Passing Through) is indeed another hybrid; not only was the character born as a limited toy edition, this sculpture was made to be shown in the lobby of Harbour City, the super-busy 700 store shopping mall in Hong Kong. Placed precisely at the entrance, during its one-month stay the Companion (Passing Through) was seen by more than a million visitors as they rushed in to do their shopping. If the visitors did not see the Companion in their haste, the Companion did not stare back either, as it was covering its face, creating an emotional distance.

9 (Let’s remember that Pop art is cool and detached. ) Yet, to miss the Companion (Passing Through) would have been difficult because of its scale: this is a gigantic

Companion (OriginalFake), 2006 Fiberglass, metal structure, paint Approximately 10 feet high Courtesy of OriginalFake store, Tokyo Photo PM KEN

Companion. Large scale is also consistent with the Pop art tradition in which KAWS 10 functions. It is “big, sentimental, plainspoken, and tough” and resorts to the giantism of popular imagery. “Enormous enlargement of an object or a fragment gives it a personality it never had before, and in this way, it can become a vehicle of entirely new 11 lyric and plastic power,” anticipated Fernand Léger. Artists such as Roy Lichtenstein with his blown-up comic strips, Claes Oldenburg with his pneumatic store objects, and 12 James Rosenquist, who called his paintings “visual inflation,” all used the change of scale as a paramount strategy to enhance and celebrate life itself.

Oldenburg, an artist greatly admired by KAWS, explained best how his art celebrates life (and we might add, in the middle of a shopping mall): I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.

I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero.

I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap & still comes out on top.

I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.

I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and 13 sweet and stupid as life itself.

No Future Companion (Collaboration with Hajime Sorayama), 2008 Silver chrome-coated metal 12 ½ x 8 x 8 inches Courtesy of the artist Photo Brad Bridgers

As the Companion (Passing Through) sits outside The Aldrich, it perhaps does not know what it is and covers its face; it is comic and bittersweet, thus imitating human emotions. With its peculiar body language, perhaps it is pondering this dual condition (commerce/art). Or is it trying to negate both its contexts? Is it ashamed? Is it, on the contrary, meditating, or perhaps thinking? In any case, its body posture certainly brings to mind that of Auguste Rodin’s 1902 sculpture, The Thinker.

All images of thinkers that spring to mind have physical isolation in common; they sit in solitude pondering the world in which they live. And indeed, this Companion (Passing Through) seems to be lonely, yet it is different from the other thinkers. The Companion is not a representation of Man. It is its own fictional character, which lives alone in a world created by KAWS. The Companion as an extension of the artist does not represent “KAWS pondering about the world he lives in,” because KAWS is creating the world he lives in, he is an active participant. As much as his sources come from the popular culture from which he directly appropriates materials, in turn he is creating more of that culture, with a global impact. This artist is setting a new tone for Popular art and popular culture, while also gestating our current street culture. His trends are just as recognized in the Ridgefield suburbs as they are in Asia, Europe, and South America. And Companion (Passing Through) reflects this grand achievement, while incorporating the apparent stress that is implied by “re-making the world.”

KAWS’s Companion (Passing Through) does not over intellectualize, because KAWS is not a passive thinker, he is an aggressive creator. My take is that this Companion shows not the anxiety of someone considering an uncertain future—the “what will happen?”—but is in a transient pause after making it happen, or taking a quiet rest between actions. And one of those actions by KAWS is to revitalize figuration in the art world, as the generation of Pop artists before him did in England.15

Companion (Collaboration with Robert Lazzarini), 2010 Vinyl. Brown, gray, and black colorways 7 ¾ inches high Courtesy of the artist

The widely seen image of The Thinker is now part of popular imagination and as such is perfectly fitted to be a source of inspiration for KAWS. Rodin’s famous work represented a sober nineteenth-century “image of Man meditating in the face of 14 destiny” and is today the quintessential image for representing the intelligentsia.

KAWS’s Companion (Passing Through) presents a different tone and, given his humorous delivery, the Companion shies away from the stereotype of The Thinker. Yet both sculptures assume the spirit of their times, suggesting the profound meditation on an uncertain present, tinged with anxiety.

Companion, 2010 Fiberglass, metal structure, paint, rubber coat 8 feet 47 ½ inches high Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Perrotin, Paris Photo Guillaume Ziccarelli

KAWS is providing us with not only new human/animal hybrid images, but most importantly with a new visual figurative vocabulary (the Companion, the Accomplice, the Chum), which is permeating every channel of communication available, from the Internet and its Web sites and blogs to design products such as toys, stickers, pillows, rugs, ashtrays, and printed media, all the way to the art world. He is also materializing those images in 3D characters that seem to have a life of their own.

We should take the Companion very seriously; as seriously as any character in a novel or play that captures the essence of its times and carries the visionary personality of its author. And in that same context, the Companion as a recognizable character is escaping KAWS, finding its new home either as a tattoo on people’s skin, as an actionlike figure, or as a sublime sculpture upon which we project our own desires, opening a channel for us to engage in wonderful adventures that take us from Hong Kong to New York, and even to Ridgefield.

Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, curator

1 Most of KAWS’s limited toy editions are featured in three colorway editions: brown, gray, and black; there is generally an edition of 500 per colorway.

2 Bronze and other resin versions of the 2004 Companions also exist.

3 OriginalFake, a fashion boutique that opened in 2006, is a collaboration between KAWS and Medicom Toy, where the artist launches new products once a month.

4 KAWS: Pay The Debt To Nature, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris, November–December, 2010.

5 For more on collaborations with artists such as Pushead, Yue Min Jun, Hajime Sorayama, and Todd James, see Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, KAWS (New York: Rizzoli International/SKIRA, 2010).

6 Lucy R. Lippard, Pop Art (1966, London; reprint New York: Thames & Hudson, 1985), p. 86.

7 These four-foot Companions are made of vinyl, but have an interior metal structure that helps support the weight.

8 Companion (Passing Through) is made of fiberglass and a steel interior frame in order to weather outdoor conditions.

9 Lippard, p. 103.

10 Lippard, p. 78, 11 Lippard, p. 18.

12 Lippard, p. 115.

13 Claes Oldenburg, “I am for an art . . .” (1961), Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings, Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz, eds. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1996), p. 335.

14 Ionel Jianou and C. Goldscheider, Rodin (Paris: Arted, Editions d’Art, 1967), p. 56.

15 Lawrence Alloway, in Lippard, p. 50.

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258 Main Street, Ridgefield, CT 06877 Tel 203.438.4519, Fax 203.438.0198, aldrichart.org The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum advances creative thinking by connecting today’s artists with individuals and communities in unexpected and stimulating ways.

Board of Trustees Mark L. Goldstein, Chairman; A. Peter Sallick, Vice-Chairman; John Tremaine, Treasurer/Secretary; Annadurai Amirthalingam; Richard Anderson; William Burback; Eric G. Diefenbach; Chris Doyle; Linda M. Dugan; Georganne Aldrich Heller, Honorary Trustee; Meagan Julian; Neil Marcus; Kathleen O’Grady; Donald Opatrny; Gregory Peterson; Peter Robbins; Martin Sosnoff, Trustee Emeritus.

Larry Aldrich (1906–2001), Founder

This sculpture project was made possible by the generous support of Harbour City, Hong Kong and AllRighstReserved Ltd.

Concept /Design: www.lookinglately.com

Companion (Passing Through), 2010 Fiberglass, metal structure, paint Approximately 16 feet high Courtesy of the artist Photo Brad Bridgers

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum