Urge #5 2020

Curator: Here we have KAWS's "Urge #5" from 2020, a mixed-media screenprint blending pop art and abstraction. What's your initial take on this one? Editor: Hmm, a rather bold chromatic assertion, wouldn't you say? That hyper-saturated green practically vibrates. It's almost… claustrophobic, or maybe desperately optimistic? And the gloved hands? Is it reaching out, or pushing away? Curator: It certainly evokes a strong reaction. KAWS, as we know, often uses popular cartoon-inspired imagery, reworking them in ways that address contemporary themes of consumerism and alienation. This piece seems to push the geometric elements to the foreground. Editor: Yes, those crossed-out eyes... I read somewhere they symbolize absence, but in this configuration it strikes me more as almost childlike or innocent in its playfulness, or maybe in some desperate plea. Almost like an icon for a world mediated by screens, sanitized by the commodification of...well, everything, wouldn't you say? Curator: Exactly. And thinking about it as a screenprint produced in multiple, highlights its accessibility and connection to a wider audience, blurring the lines between high art and commodity. We see it is as an object produced serially for consumption within a contemporary economy Editor: Absolutely. The means of production speaks volumes. The printmaking process, with its inherent reproducibility, is quite fascinating when paired with those evocative shapes and colors. It speaks to how these images become almost branded, imprinted onto our consciousness through the very structures of distribution. What appears deceptively innocent has darker depths of industrial making, wouldn't you say? Curator: I agree, it encourages us to question the systems that create and disseminate these images. To consider the hands, almost pleading. Editor: And those textures! Almost digital cross hatching to the background. It begs to make it out, to feel and caress, a fetishistic desire only a visual work like this can inspire. But then again, what isn't these days? I can see I'm not the only one seeing beyond surface level of this image... Curator: The texture and material layering contributes to the meaning and effect of the work. What else is interesting about the serial nature and social value and reception. Editor: Right! That initial playful response turns introspective, it holds a mirror to us about how the very production and reproducibility of things creates distance and access to connection! Curator: Absolutely, making “Urge #5” much more than a vibrant artwork, a snapshot of ourselves and of now.