{"id":93992,"date":"2024-08-05T15:01:22","date_gmt":"2024-08-05T15:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=93992"},"modified":"2024-08-08T15:43:49","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T15:43:49","slug":"kaws-julia-chiang-grazia-gazette-hamptons-august-2024","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/kaws-julia-chiang-grazia-gazette-hamptons-august-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"KAWS and Julia Chiang take the Hamptons"},"content":{"rendered":"
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KAWS, TIME OFF,<\/em> 2021. Photo Credit: Courtesy the artist<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Hamptons have long served as a wellspring of inspiration for artist couples. Abstract Expressionist pioneers Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, and James Brooks and Charlotte Park all made their homes in and around Springs and East Hampton in the mid-20th century. More recently, figurative painters April Gornik and Eric Fischl converted a white clapboard church in Sag Harbour into a community arts center in 2021. With the opening of a pair of solo exhibitions during the Parrish Art Museum\u2019s Midsummer Weekend last month, the Water Mill cultural institution added another duo to that pantheon: Brian Donnelly, the creator of subversive cartoon characters who is better known as KAWS<\/a>, and painter and ceramicist Julia Chiang<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Julia Chiang and Brian Donnelly. Photo Credit: Lisa Tamburini.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re celebrating a legacy that we have in the East End of artists from New York coming out here to build community,\u201d says the Parrish\u2019s executive director M\u00f3nica Ram\u00edrez-Montagut of the impetus for the shows, which mark both the first solo museum show for Chiang, who is represented by Nicola Vassell Gallery, and the first time Donnelly\u2019s and Chiang\u2019s work has been exhibited together. \u201cI think it\u2019s important to talk about community, about artists\u2019 relationships, and those invisible kinds of support systems that allow them to thrive in their profession,\u2019\u2019 she adds, noting that the husband and wife\u2019s social circle includes another artist couple, Sam Moyer<\/a> and Eddie Martinez<\/a>, who have a summer home in Orient and whose sculptural mosaics and bold and colorful Bufly paintings, respectively, are featured in another pair of solo exhibitions that opened at the Parrish earlier in the season. All four shows will be on view through early fall.<\/p>\n

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Installation view of Julia Chiang: The Glows and the Blows.<\/em> Photo Credit: Jason Schmidt.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

While Donnelly and Chiang don\u2019t have their own place in the East End\u2014they reside in Brooklyn with their two daughters, Sunny, 10, and Lee, 7\u2014they are regular summer visitors. As a nod to the Hamptons being a place he comes with his family to creatively recharge, Donnelly titled his show KAWS: Time Off <\/i>after a reclining Companion sculpture that is featured. \u201cWe love the beach, and we have a lot of friends out here,\u201d says Chiang. \u201cIt means a lot to have my first museum show at the Parrish because we\u2019ve visited since our older daughter was just in a baby carrier.\u201d While their parents greeted guests during a preview, both girls were eager to go outside and hula hoop at a kiddie station set up by Carmen Herrera\u2019s red, blue, green, and yellow Estructuras Monumentales <\/i>in the museum\u2019s South Meadow.<\/p>\n

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KAWS sculpture salon, featuring the artist’s new MONSTERS<\/em> series at back. Photo Credit: Jason Schmidt.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Donnelly, who started out as a graffiti artist in the 1990s, has shown his work everywhere from bus shelters to the Brooklyn Museum and Kim Jones\u2019 Dior Men runway in Paris (Dior is a\u00a0KAWS: Time Off\u00a0<\/i>sponsor). Part of what appealed to him about exhibiting at the Parrish is the museum\u2019s soaring architecture. The barn-like structure designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron features cavernous galleries that measure 26 feet at their peak, easily accommodating Donnelly\u2019s monumental sculptures. He assembled what he terms a \u201csculpture salon,\u201d an assemblage of 11 black-painted bronzes, including an eight-foot-tall\u00a0BFF\u00a0<\/i>Companion and a new four-part series\u2014NIGHT FRANKEN, NIGHT BOO, NIGHT COUNT,\u00a0<\/i>and\u00a0NIGHT FRUTE<\/i>\u2014modeled on the General Mills cereal monsters with \u201cX\u201ds for eyes that are each between five and six feet tall. The sculptures sit directly on the floor rather than on pedestals so the public can more directly engage with them. \u201cHaving them all in one color, in one space, you can just concentrate on the forms and maybe forget that they\u2019re characters,\u201d Donnelly says.<\/p>\n

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KAWS, FIVE SUSPECTS (#TWO),<\/em> 2016. Julia Chiang, A Little More, No There, No\u00a0 More,<\/em> 2024. Photo Credit: Courtesy the artist and Larry Warsh. Courtesy Diane and Craig Solomon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Donnelly and Chiang have always kept their work separate, and on the face of it, their art practices couldn\u2019t be more different. His is resolutely representational: In addition to the sculpture salon, the show includes a gallery filled with canvases shaped like Snoopy and Felix the Cat and new cereal box paintings. Hers features abstracted pourings of paints on wood panels and biomorphic ceramics covered in layered glazes that are inspired by medical scans and the idea of the body as a vessel. At the Parrish, their paintings occupy open galleries situated across a corridor, inviting comparison: Both favor bright pigments, and within Donnelly\u2019s shaped canvases he too works with intricate webs of shapes and forms. \u201cWhat was exciting for me was being able to see his show from my galleries and knowing that he could see mine from his,\u201d says Chiang.<\/p>\n

Read GRAZIA USA’<\/em>s Hamptons August Gazette<\/a>:<\/h4>\n