Expanded Holiday
Expanded Holiday demonstrated the enormous potential of AR technology, which provides virtual perspectives on real-world environments, and conveys KAWS’s mischievous humour through the juxtaposition of physical and virtual worlds. These virtual sculptures were accessible via the Acute Art app and could be experienced in conjunction with the NGV’s exclusive exhibition KAWS: Companionship in the Age of Loneliness, a comprehensive survey of 25 years of KAWS’s oeuvre and his largest solo survey to date. Full of humour, hope and humanity, the exhibition featured more than 100 works including iconic paintings reappropriating pop-culture figures to more recent largescale, layered works, and an impressive collection of KAWS’s celebrated sculptural figures.

The Little General Pinball Machine
“One of the most memorable pieces in the 1997 Documenta X was Öyvind Fahlström’s The Little General (Pinball Machine), 1967. Resembling a raised indoor swimming pool with some two dozen movable parts spread out across its shimmering Plexiglas surface, the thirty-year-old “variable” sculpture radiated a visual audacity that made much of the current work around it pale by comparison. Ersatz scoring cues brushed up against cutouts of historical and pop-culture figures, who in turn seemed to jostle dismembered cartoon limbs and partial anatomies. The cumulative effect was dizzying, as if news, commercials, and cartoons were being broadcast in one overpowering barrage.”Dan Cameron

“Washingtonland” reflects his fondness for mashing up pop-culture elements, frequently including Mickey Mouse. “Mickey Mouse represents America to me,”more…