Complex Interview with KAWS

Has the “fuck it” graffiti mentality faded?
KAWS: I think I still have the same “fuck it” mentality; the reality is that now I’m a business. My interests are other risks, like trying to put together a new studio building. To me, that’s a risk; I don’t have a safety net. If I mess up, then that’s hard.
Where’s the new studio?
KAWS: I’m working on a studio space in Brooklyn with Masamichi Katayama [of Japanese architecture firm Wonderwall]. More on that to come.
What influences the new work?
KAWS: I don’t really know where the new stuff is coming from. It’s super-colorful and friendly looking, but for me it’s really dark. When I paint identifiable pop stuff like the SpongeBob series, I’m not seeing SpongeBob at all, and it’s weird to have someone connect it to the TV show because I forget that that’s how the viewer relates. Now I’m abstracting it and making it more about color and shape. As far as artists influencing my work, when I get into another artist, I try to work with them—like Hajime Sorayama, who we did the figure with.
How did you put the piece together?
KAWS: I’ve become friends with him through traveling to Japan. I wanted to take the figure work to another level, to do something totally outside of what I did. So, in 2006, I asked him to paint a version of the Companion, which I then worked on turning into the figure. I didn’t want to compromise the project at all, so I let it take as long as it needed to, and let it get as expensive as it needed to.
Do you collect his work?
KAWS: I’ve been collecting Sorayama’s paintings for a few years, and I'll buy one or two every time I go over there. He’s 60 and was the Playboy illustrator in the ’70s and ’80s, and probably the best living illustrator in Japan—not exaggerating. He designed the Aibo robot dog for Sony.
Sorayama plays the line between art and commercial work kind of like you do, right?
KAWS: Well, it’s only recently that there even really is an art market in Japan, so his craft was about finding a way to do what he wanted to within a commercial world. But instead of doing product like I do, he painted and made money through illustration work. I think it’s awesome that he figured out a way to chill and make the paintings he wants.
That’s not so bad.
KAWS: I mean, really, that’s my goal. To know that I can just make paintings and be all set.