KAWS TIME OFF RECLINES THROUGH VIENNA’S LAST WEEKEND

KAWS Art and Comix ends September 27 at Albertina Modern in Vienna, and the artist's final weekend photographs begin with a figure taking its time. TIME OFF, dated 2021, reclines across the gallery floor with a pink nose and crossed eyes. Its low, sprawling pose makes a better invitation to this exhibition than another claim about how widely KAWS characters circulate.

The photographs place that dark figure in front of brightly coloured paintings. Fur shaped into dense ridges gives its silhouette a busy edge, while the face remains simple enough to register at a glance. Visitors can read the posture before identifying the character, which is precisely where a show about comics and fine art becomes interesting.

This is a closing weekend notice, not the announcement of a new KAWS sculpture. Albertina Modern opened Art & Comix on April 3. The remaining opportunity is to see how the existing works behave alongside one another, at the scale and distance a gallery permits.

TIME OFF Brings the Figure Down to Floor Level

Albertina identifies TIME OFF as a 2021 KAWS work from a private collection. The reclining figure appears prominently in both the museum's exhibition material and the artist's September 25 gallery photographs.

Its pose changes the visitor's relationship to a familiar cartoon body. A standing figure can confront a viewer at eye level; this one stretches sideways and asks the eye to travel along its length. The pink nose supplies a small, bright interruption in a much darker form. Even with crossed eyes, the character's bodily arrangement provides an emotional register.

The gesture connects with the paired figures in KAWS's FELLOWS sculpture, introduced alongside his Seoul museum programme in July. Both put relationships and posture into recognisable character shapes. Vienna offers the additional pressure of other artists working with a shared cartoon vocabulary nearby.

Bernhardt's Pink Panther Shares the Room

Albertina's exhibition brings KAWS into dialogue with artists including Katherine Bernhardt, Joyce Pensato and Cosima von Bonin. Its stated subject is the movement between comics, cartoons and fine art, including the physical gestures of recurring characters.

The Pink Panther painting visible behind TIME OFF gives the opening photograph two different kinds of body. One occupies the floor; the other is carried by a painted surface. Their pink elements establish a visual connection without requiring their shapes, materials or moods to agree.

That is the reward of seeing the installation rather than an isolated product photograph. The relationship changes as the camera moves, and a sculpture's outline can interrupt a painting behind it. KAWS's photographs preserve some of those juxtapositions, but the floor space between the objects remains a reason to visit.

Cartoon Bodies Change Across Materials

Art & Comix extends beyond the reclining KAWS sculpture to paintings and other figures in several materials. Its installation lets a visitor compare how artists turn recognisable cartoon bodies into objects with weight, texture and position.

The different materials matter because Art & Comix is a conversation among artists. A tight crop can make a room look like a solo presentation; a wider frame restores the neighbours. The images encourage attention to different densities of line and different ways a drawn character can become an object.

Vienna also sits alongside Friends and Neighbors in Seoul, which opened July 23 with twenty new paintings and sculptures. Those two museum settings give the artist's character language different company: new KAWS works together in Seoul, and a broader comic conversation in Vienna.

Sunday Is the Last Chance to Compare Them

Art & Comix closes at Albertina Modern on Sunday, September 27, 2026. The museum's shop lists German language guided tours that day at 11 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., with the tour charge separate from museum admission.

That distinction matters when planning a final visit: a tour booking and an exhibition ticket are different purchases. Anyone arriving chiefly for KAWS should also leave room for the surrounding artists, since their proximity supplies the show's most useful comparisons.

The earlier Vienna closing notice established the deadline. The final gallery images now offer a more concrete reason to make it: TIME OFF stretched low across the room, with Bernhardt's painted Pink Panther operating behind it. September 27 removes the chance to walk between those two kinds of cartoon body.