No Reply #5 2015

Kaws made this ‘No Reply #5’ painting with vibrant blocks of colour and hard-edged shapes. It's like he's playing with a puzzle, or maybe a cartoon that's been taken apart and put back together in a totally new way. The surface is super smooth, so smooth that you can’t see any trace of brushstrokes. The colours – that bright yellow, the muted pink, and the deep purple – feel really flat, almost like vinyl. There’s a kind of cool detachment to the painting, but also a sense of playfulness. It makes me think of James Rosenquist and his love of big scale commercial images, but there's also something very graphic and contemporary here too. Look how the purple swoosh sits on top of the pink. It creates this tension, this push and pull that keeps your eye moving around the canvas. 'No Reply #5' could be about the way we see and consume images today, where everything is flattened and sped up, but it's so ambiguous that it could be about anything – and maybe that’s the point.