The Parrish Art Museum will open “KAWS: Time Off” and “Julia Chiang: The Glows and The Blows” on Sunday. Both include new work made with the museum’s architecture in mind.
“An important part of the museum’s work is to expand the field of art,” said Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, executive director of the Water Mill institution, “and we are delighted that KAWS will present never-before-seen paintings, together with an unprecedented showing of eleven human-scale sculptures. We are particularly looking forward to Julia Chiang’s first solo museum show, an exhibition that will surprise the visitor both for its lushness and delicacy.”
KAWS, who is based in Brooklyn, works in a wide range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, installation, and product design. His practice draws from both “high” and “low” culture, questioning the conventional hierarchies of the art world establishment and seeking to democratize the way art is experienced.
With an appreciation of popular culture and a fascination with excessive consumerism, KAWS both examines the flaws of conspicuous consumption while also exulting, says the museum, in the joys it sometimes brings. Through riffs on beloved childhood characters, his work also explores emotions of joy, innocence, and love, as well as despair, loneliness, and alienation.
KAWS began his career as a graffiti artist on the East Coast, where he developed some of the forms that are part of his iconography. While working as an animator for television and film in the late 1990s, he gained underground recognition for his series of advertising interventions, in which he would remove and paint his characters onto existing ads before returning them to their original locations.
“KAWS: Time Off” has been organized by Ms. Ramírez-Montagut, with additional support from Brianna L. Hernández, assistant curator.
Ms. Chiang’s painterly process is slow and controlled, while spontaneous. Organic shapes form on the picture plane in varying densities of paint and, with fervor, vie for attention. While her work is abstract, the body is the basis for her allegories, metaphors, and experiences.
Her organic-looking imagery borrows from the physical, such as medical scans and internal body liquids, as well as the psychological, including layered feelings and emotions, tensions between internal turmoil and external pressures, and between fragility and strength.
“I’m always interested in our bodies as vessels, what we contain and what we cannot,” Ms. Chiang has said. “I imagine the millions of tiny bits that make up our bodies and everything around us. I sit with images of plant life, animals, anatomy. How we merge and push against one another, how new forms emerge and how we transform.”
“Julia Chiang: The Glows and The Blows” has been organized by Corinne Erni, the museum’s chief curator, art and education, with additional support from Ms. Hernández.
Both exhibitions will continue through Oct. 13.
Midsummer Weekend
The museum’s annual Midsummer Weekend, which supports its educational initiatives, exhibitions, and public programs, will once again unfold in two parts. The Midsummer Dance will happen tomorrow evening from 7 to 11, with Angel and Dren in a D.J. set starting at 8. Held on the museum’s terrace, it will feature dancing, drinks, and hors d’oeuvres.
Tickets are $300.
The Midsummer Dinner, set for Saturday, will begin with cocktails at 6 p.m., and continue with dinner on the terrace at 7:30 and dancing with D.J. M.O.S. at 9. The event will honor Susan Pear Meisel and Louis K. Meisel for their philanthropy, and the artists KAWS, Shirin Neshat, and Sean Scully.
Tickets start at $2,000.
