Lost Time

Lost Time is a signed screen print in colours on wove paper produced by the renowned American artist and designer, KAWS in 2018. The print depicts a loose and abstract composition of graphic shapes rendered in bold and vibrant colours. KAWS’ prints tend to feature his iconic cartoon characters however this print stands out from the artist’s previous works and instead KAWS privileges an experimentation with colour and the arrangement of shapes.

The piece was shown alongside two other screen prints at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit in 2019. All three screen prints are devoid of KAWS’ cartoon figures and instead capture the fundamentals of the artist’s visual style, characterised by an emphasis on colour, the use of bold gestural lines and the incorporation of graphic shapes.

KAWS’ style is clearly influenced by his experimentation with graffiti and street art. The artist started practising graffiti from a young age while he was growing up in New Jersey and continued honing these skills when he moved to New York in the 1990s. The artist’s origins in graffiti mean he is often compared to Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat, two 20th century artists who emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s.