“Companion,” a recurring character in the oeuvre of artist Brian Donnelly (aka KAWS), sits all by himself in the middle of Sifly Plaza. The big-eared sculpture hunches over his lap, covering his eyes in a gesture of despair.
But it's hard to keep a good man down. This figure -- a cross between Walt Disney's original, white-gloved version of Mickey Mouse and the Zelig of Woody Allen's eponymous film -- is everywhere in his creator's exhibition, “KAWS: Down Time,” at the High Museum of Art. Which itself is everywhere -- in the Stent Wing atrium, the Wieland Pavilion lobby and the fourth floor.
He plays a giant Michelin Man in another life-size sculpture in the gallery and a tiny Darth Vader in a line of the artist's limited-edition toys. He is a spermlike creature wrapping himself around Kate Moss in altered fashion photographs. He peers through a lattice of black planklike forms in the painting “Glass Smile.”
Like Keith Haring's “Radiant Child,” “Companion” is an iconic figure adaptable to all sorts of merchandise. Its X-ed out eyes and other recurring motifs, the equivalent of Ralph Lauren's polo player, appear on wallets, jeans and so on sold online and at his retail outlet, Original Fake, in Tokyo.
(Like Haring, KAWS began as a graffiti artist, attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and turned out to be a branding whiz.)
The toys and sculptures strike me as amusing one-liners, but the paintings are another story. A cultural magpie, KAWS has absorbed lessons from cartoonists R. Crumb and Disney, as well as artists Jim Nutt and H.C. Westermann. KAWS skillfully weaves semiabstract elements into dense and intricate compositions laced with bright, sometimes fluorescent hues.
Executed in tight, anonymous brushstrokes, the paintings playfully toggle between flatness and depth, abstraction and figuration. “Gone and Beyond,” created for this exhibition, consists of three rows of nine circular canvases, which can be read from a distance as color and shape, but close-up is a thicket of references to body parts and his familiar motifs.
The work has an uncanny ability to evoke associations across generations. Beyond the obvious references to “Star Wars” and Disney, one could read the sculpture on the plaza as a cartoon version of Rodin's “The Thinker” or equate the louche, lolling tongues in “Gone and Beyond” to the Rolling Stones' 1971 logo. Others might see connections to Japanese manga and Hello Kitty.
If KAWS is expressing darker serious thoughts, he has thoroughly camouflaged them with humor and good cheer.
High Museum curator Michael Rook organized the exhibition and “Alejandro Aguilera, About the Modern Spirit,” which is around the corner. The Atlanta artist's monumental portraits of art and cultural heroes, drawings that emphasize the hand in flurries of marks, make for an interesting counterpoint to KAWS' work. These rich and handsome works are, of course, worthy in their own right.
Catherine Fox is chief visual arts critic for http://www.ArtsCriticATL.com.
Review
“KAWS: Downtime” and “Alejandro Aguilera, About the Modern Spirit.”
Through May 20. $18; $15, students and seniors; $11, children 6-17; free for children 5 and under and members. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays; until 8 p.m. Thursdays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays. High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St. 404-733-4444, www.high.org.
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