Urge #10 2020

Kaws made this print titled Urge #10 sometime around 2020, and straight away you can see how much line work is at play. It's all about the process of mark making, the kind of controlled chaos I aim for in my own paintings. There's something cool about the flat blocks of colour bumping up against these wiry, almost anxious lines. Look at how the orange hand pushes up against the blank face, those cross-eyed X's, simple but loaded with meaning. Is it absence, or a kind of overwhelmed state? I guess it's both. And the hands, bright and cartoonish, feel like they’re trying to comfort or maybe smother. For me, Urge #10 brings to mind Guston’s later works, with their raw, graphic style. But Kaws brings his own spin, a 21st-century anxiety wrapped up in a pop sensibility. It’s a conversation across generations, a reminder that art doesn’t have to have all the answers, sometimes it just needs to ask the right questions.