By Steph. C.
KAWS is in Toronto at the AGO! The first museum to bring KAWS to Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario presents KAWS: FAMILY. This original exhibition opens September 27th, 2023. American artist Brian Donnelly, aka KAWS, is globally renowned for his unique and distinctive designs in pop culture.
The exhibit is curated by Julian Cox, the AGO’s deputy director and chief curator. It 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 Level 2 of the museum, including larger-than-life wood sculptures and augmented reality installations.
“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,” said Cox in a media release.
Working in bronze, wood, on paper and canvas, with plush toys and stainless steel, KAWS’s art is populated by a cast of reoccurring figures, whose shapes were born out of his early interest in collectible toys. Adapting features from popular American cartoons, these figures are at once playful and serious, and in their various poses, forms and sizes, explore distinctly 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.
Don’t miss out on Kaw’s first museum presentation in Canada. Admission to KAWS: FAMILY is free for all Indigenous peoples, AGO Members, Annual Passholders and visitors aged 25 and under. AGO Members see it first beginning Sept. 27, 2023. Annual Passholders join Members in seeing the exhibition beginning Oct. 4, 2023. Single paid tickets will be available beginning Oct. 11, 2023. KAWS: FAMILY runs until March 31, 2024. For more details on how to book your tickets or to become a Member or Annual Passholder, visit AGO.ca.
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