KAWS, the ’21st-Century Andy Warhol,’ Lands in Seoul

Two figures grapple, seizing each other by the collar. The one caught by the scruff looks ready to tear at the other’s cheek. Their eyes are marked with X’s. Their bodies bulge round, as if fitted with tires. The work, which looks as though both figures might burst, is “Neck and Neck,” the latest piece by pop artist KAWS.

The first Korean museum solo exhibition by KAWS, dubbed the “21st-century Andy Warhol,” opens on the 23rd at Kolon’s Space K in Magok-dong, Gangseo-gu, Seoul, under the title “Friends and Neighbors.” His real name is Brian Donnelly, and he began in the 1990s with street graffiti—known then as scribble art—and billboard work. The exhibition presents some 20 works, centered on large-scale pieces including new paintings and sculptures. In the title, “friends” refers to intimacy one chooses, while “neighbors” points to relationships that grow close by chance. The two bring comfort but also breed conflict. The round character “CHUM” bears the tension. Like the KAWS work installed at Paradise City on Yeongjong Island in Incheon, his earlier works were comforting figures that embraced or draped arms over each other’s shoulders, but this time they fight and shove one another. The artist, who visited Korea for the solo exhibition, said, “The emotions of the past few years—wariness left by the COVID-19 pandemic, gratitude, and political tension all tangled together—seeped into the work.”

The trademark by which a KAWS work can be recognized anytime and anywhere is the pair of eyes rendered as X’s. Asked why he renders the eyes as X’s, the artist explained, “During the days when I painted over billboard advertisements, I improvised a skull with X’s drawn over its eyes, and that was the start.” He added, “As I searched for a way to depict a single image in its simplest essence, I focused on the X, and I have continued to draw X-shaped eyes ever since because it is an utterly universal symbol that I can also make entirely my own.”

For a former street scribbler and advertising man, the threshold into the fine art world was steep. From the 2010s his work gradually began to appear in museum exhibitions, and a large-scale retrospective that began at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in the United States in 2016 continued to Shanghai, China, the following year, bringing his name across Asia. At a Hong Kong auction in April 2019, a painting reimagining the Simpsons in the KAWS style sold for about 16.7 billion won, setting a record for the artist’s highest price. Figure characters small enough to sit on a desk began trading at premiums. As if to answer the love, the artist tethered his work to a weather balloon and floated it into the stratosphere during the isolation of the pandemic. It was the result of considering work that could be experienced safely at home, at a time when exhibitions were being canceled one after another.

Though this is his first solo exhibition, his ties to Korea run fairly deep. In 2018 he floated a 28-meter-long inflatable “Companion” on Seokchon Lake in Jamsil. In 2022 he painted the cover of the solo album by BTS member J-Hope. Familiar as the KAWS image is, the bronze sculptures in this exhibition are all uniformly black. “The intent is to strip away color to focus attention on form, and to let the viewer’s eye move between two-dimensional painting and three-dimensional sculpture,” the artist said.

Of course, his vivid colors can also be seen. The painting series “Red Ball” takes the playground as its stage. The playground is a place of friendship and childhood, but also a place where disputes begin over rules. The gestures of the two characters move between play and fight. The red ball in the title rolls across the picture like the seed of conflict. A texture of dots, as though paint had been scattered, covers the surface, evoking at once the noise of an analog screen, the halftone dots of print, and the traces of spray.

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KAWS’s “Red Ball” / Photo courtesy of Space K
“Healing,” hung between KAWS’s new works “Looking Afar” (left) and “Measuring the Shadow” (right), reflects its title by showing the resolution of conflict and the possibility of harmony. / Photo courtesy of Space K
Artist KAWS stands before his “Red Ball” series. / Photo courtesy of Space K
American pop artist KAWS’s latest 2026 work “Neck and Neck” is on display at Space K in Magok-dong, Gangseo-gu, Seoul. / Photo courtesy of Space K
KAWS’s “Neck and Neck” and “Red Ball” series / Photo courtesy of Space K
KAWS’s “Healing” / Photo courtesy of Space K

Deeper inside the exhibition hall, two sculptures face each other, set beside the artist’s abstract paintings. It is a gaze of a different form from the comfort of the Three Kingdoms–era Pensive Bodhisattva placed in the “Room of Quiet Contemplation” at the National Museum of Korea. “Gazing Afar” depicts KAWS’s signature character “Companion” leaning against a pedestal and gazing into the distance. In “Measuring the Shadow,” the character “Accomplice,” with a rabbit-like face, examines the ground at its feet.

If one chooses “Healing” as the final work, the entire exhibition is completed as a single film. In the painting, eleven “CHUM” figures each hold their own painting of the sea. The sea is unfathomable and unsteady, but if one steps back, the seas connect and can become everyone’s sea. Lee Jang-wook, senior curator at Space K, commented, “Andy Warhol called himself an artist who came up ‘from downtown to uptown’ in his lifetime, but KAWS is the very 21st-century Andy Warhol, moving between downtown and uptown and carrying it forward.” The exhibition runs through December 27.