Description
What first draws attention in KAWS: FAMILY is not the expressions of its characters, but the distance between them. COMPANION, BFF, and CHUM have X-shaped eyes that reveal almost no readable emotion, yet they move close to one another, embrace, hide behind another figure, or support each other when needed. The 2021 sculpture FAMILY arranges characters of different sizes in a composition resembling a family portrait, but KAWS assigns them no explicit roles as parents, children, or blood relatives. Here, family is presented more as a structure of relationships, formed through companionship, protection, dependence, and responsibility.
These emotions are not always warm. In GOOD INTENTIONS, a small COMPANION shelters beside a larger figure, while the protective gesture also suggests that adults can never shield children from every form of harm. In TAKE and SHARE, one figure lifts and holds a smaller body, turning care into the most direct form of physical action. In SEPARATED, meanwhile, the curled and lowered body leads the idea of family toward separation, loss, and helplessness. KAWS deliberately reduces facial expression, shifting emotion instead into posture, scale, and space. Who moves closer to whom, who is left behind, and who needs another body for support can invite viewers to project their own experiences more readily than a clearly expressive face.
Developed from the exhibition of the same name at the Art Gallery of Ontario, KAWS: FAMILY does not confine “family” to a single theme. Instead, it uses the idea as a point of entry for reconsidering more than two decades of KAWS’s work. The book brings together paintings, drawings, sculptures, product design, and exhibition views, featuring signature characters such as COMPANION, BFF, and CHUM, while also extending to popular culture imagery including Snoopy, The Simpsons, and Sesame Street, as well as collaborations with Nike, furniture projects, and other cross-disciplinary work. These seemingly disparate media ultimately point toward a question that has long occupied KAWS: can an image that is endlessly reproduced, consumed, and instantly recognized still retain a sense of private emotion?
This question is also central to KAWS’s long-standing position between art and commodity. A plastic toy can be enlarged into a bronze or wooden sculpture, while a figure displayed in a museum may later be reduced in scale and appear on clothing, sneakers, or everyday objects. KAWS does not attempt to establish a clear hierarchy between the two. The sketches, collaborative projects, and sculptures in different materials collected in KAWS: FAMILY make this movement between contexts especially visible: the value of a character does not depend entirely on whether it appears in a museum or on a retail shelf, but on how the same visual language changes meaning through shifts in scale, material, and the conditions in which it is viewed.
Spanning 156 pages and featuring approximately 150 color images, the book is co-published by DelMonico Books and the Art Gallery of Ontario, with curatorial essays and an artist interview providing further insight into KAWS’s creative practice. KAWS: FAMILY is therefore both an exhibition catalogue and a thematic retrospective that reorganizes his work through the idea of “relationships.” When these characters, despite having no truly readable expressions, draw close to one another, the work begins to speak about more than cartoons, street culture, or popular imagery. It addresses more fundamental human experiences: how we depend on others, how we try to protect those we love, and how being forced apart can make us realize just how much weight companionship carries.
Details
Authors: Jim Shedden, Stephan Jost, Julian Cox
Publisher: DelMonico Books
Publication Year: 2024
Size: 26 × 26 cm
Format: Hardcover
