Urge #8 2020

Here's a short audio guide script reflecting on Kaws' "Urge #8". This image, made by Kaws, features flat planes of purple and a set of colourful hands. I’m picturing Kaws in the studio, layering those lines, deciding where each colour should sit. It’s a process of slowly building up the image, one mark at a time. There’s something about these characters that feels familiar, yet slightly off-kilter. It’s like looking at a cartoon that’s been deconstructed, or a toy that’s been taken apart and put back together in a new way. The hands that gesture with their x marks make me think of a painter’s hands, mixing colours, holding brushes, building up the surface of a canvas with layer upon layer of paint. Ultimately, artists build on each other’s ideas, remixing and reinterpreting them in their own way. I love that painting can hold so many different possibilities, that it allows us to see the world from new and unexpected angles.