KAWS needs no introduction, I’m sure. But here goes: Brian Donnelly is a New Jersey-born artist who started his artistic life making graffiti and has gone on, through the invention of a cast of characters who he presents in various forms, from toys through paintings, sculpture, collaborations with numerous consumer brands to now virtual reality, to become a darling of the auction room; the must-have artist for private collectors around the world. He’s hailed by some as today’s Andy Warhol, transcending the boundaries of art and commerce, and reaching an audience most other artists can only dream of.
This show is being billed by the Serpentine and its collaborator Acute Art, a company set up a few years ago to produce and sell works in virtual and augmented reality, as a landmark moment, because it exists in three incarnations – as a show in the Serpentine North Gallery, in augmented reality on the Acute Art app, and on the gaming platform Fortnite, potential opening it up to hundreds of millions of people. But it’s embarrassing, both in terms of the physical show and in the context of the Serpentine’s previously excellent digital programming. In all three realms, the conceptual emptiness and visual bankruptcy of KAWS’s work is numbingly, unerringly apparent.
