Ads Into Art
May 5, 2000

KAWS is a New York-based artist that "liberates" bus-shelter and subway ads, takes them home, and airbrushes strangely compelling cartoon-inspired imagery upon them before returning the poster from whence it came. Unlike most graffiti, which is traditionally confined to subway and freight cars or brick walls, his advertiser unfriendly method has meant occasionally dealing with people he views as Philistines: "The bus shelter poster people are very quick to remove my work - it's an eradicate mentality. They try and pretend it doesn't exist and remove it as fast as possible."

Like the musician Beck, 25-year-old KAWS utilizes a pastiche of disparate influences to create something pop-art accessible yet dripping in oddball uniqueness. As KAWS puts it, "Most of the things you come in contact with inspire you in one way or the other - whether it's a direction to go in or a direction to stay away from."

As for the artwork itself, KAWS explains, "Basically it's layering - breaking up the imagery into layers and making things drop back or push forward." This layering can be partially attributed to his former job as a freelance animator for Disney, where the use of cels and backgrounds played a role in his artistic development. His reoccurring icons (skull and crossbones or sperm-like snakes) embrace, pierce, obliterate, or augment those obsequious airbrushed models that harangue our attention on every street corner. As he puts it, "I'm interested in discovering all the variables and permutations that can be created by intertwining the simplest image possible into various advertising campaigns."

His interest in graffiti began back in grammar school when he was 12, but it wasn't until 1991 that he began making his presence felt through "bombing" (putting his "tag" in as many places as possible) and "piecing" (elaborate and larger-scale graffiti works). He later progressed from walls to billboards to increase his exposure and push the limits of his risk tolerance. A graduate of New York's School of Visual Arts (where he spent six hours a day studying traditional life painting by Jean-Leon Gerome and John Seargent) he is now more likely to name-check painters like Gerhard Richter, Klaus Oldenberg and Chuck Close than graffiti contemporaries.

His laid-back, sometimes non-committal hip-hop kid drawl masks an atypical ambition however, and as his notoriety has grown, his attempts to alter public space and challenge the supremacy of advertising is being undermined by both fans and detractors. Often times collectors take his posters before the transit shelter people can. "I recently did a bus stop that I didn't even get a photo of. I went back a half-hour later and it was stolen. That kills me." Reaching more people, coupled with the extremely ephemeral nature of his medium helps explain why KAWS has been so receptive toward traditional art gallery overtures. Since 1997, the few posters that he keeps for himself have been shown in Mexico, Berlin, Hong Kong, Munich, London, New York and Tokyo. The galleries in question pay his airfare, and he arrives before his showing so as to rearrange the indigenous advertisements for both pleasure and self-promotion.

Last May KAWS put an interesting twist on his technique - he spent a month before his Paris show at Colette gallery, altering indigenous French posters and couriered 16 back home. Upon his return he created a bit of culture shock by inserting the aforementioned Parisian advertisements into bus shelters along New York's Houston Street.

Strangely enough, not all targeted corporations oppose his culture jamming. In fact, jean-magnate Diesel enjoys what KAWS does so much that for the past couple of years they've been supplying him with free posters - no strings attached. This acquiescence, coupled with his calm, almost cavalier attitude, make it easy to forget that his manipulation of the corporate canvas is illegal. While he still battles the occasional bout of nerves, KAWS has become quite adept at disassociating his fear from the task at hand. "You need to convince yourself that what you're doing is perfectly fine. And then you walk about and do it during broad daylight. I find that's the best approach."