KAWS - Four Foot Dissected Companion (Black), 2009

KAWS (Jersey City, 1974), pseudonym of Brian Donnelly, is one of the contemporary artists most influential in the dialogue between art, design and pop culture. Beginning as a writer and illustrator, he built an immediately recognisable visual language around the reinterpretation of iconic characters through essential forms, X eyes and an aesthetic that joins urban culture, comics and monumental sculpture. He has collaborated with major international brands and exhibited in leading museums worldwide, helping to redraw the boundary between contemporary art and mass visual culture.

The Four Foot Dissected Companion is one of the most iconic sculptures in KAWS's entire production. Presented in 2009, it belongs to the Companion series, the character that more than any other identifies his research and has become an internationally recognised symbol. In this version KAWS introduces the Dissected motif, showing half the body in its exterior form and half as an anatomical section: muscles, organs and skeletal structure rendered in a deliberately simplified, graphic language, turning a potentially scientific subject into a visual reflection on identity, vulnerability and the human condition.

The work sets two apparently opposed worlds in dialogue — the childish imagery of the toy and the anatomical representation of the body — and that contraposition is among the most characteristic elements of KAWS's poetics, using familiar figures to address fragility, introspection and the relationship between exterior and interior. At over a metre in height, the Four Foot Dissected Companion also marks a turning point in the artist's production: the Companion evolves from a small-format collectible into a sculptural presence of real impact, anticipating the monumental installations KAWS would realise in museums and public spaces in the following years.

With an edition limited to 100 examples, this version is among the most sought after of the entire series. The combination of scale, an extremely contained production and the centrality of the subject within the artist's career makes it one of the most representative works of his research, and one of the images through which contemporary art of the twenty-first century is recognised.