This is a good look for KAWS, kicking off Skarstedt New York's new Chelsea gallery with a solo show of new paintings called DAY BY DAY. With his collection show up at The Drawing Center that is receiving rave reviews, museum show at the Parrish just coming down, it's been another significant year for the artist in the contemporary art circuit (his commercial work continues to explode, as always). The thing that gets lost in KAWS' fine art work is how self-aware the paintings are; they understand their convesation with the audience, fans, detractors and just curious observers of art world trends. This show goes back to, in a sense, the roots of KAWS' rise, textured paintings that give the effect of spray paint, of the street, with the gallery pointing out that there is an element of Pointillism of the late nineteenth century in here as well. I've always been fascinated by KAWS layering imagery upon itself as if to be speaking to his own history, a sort of pop-cultural self-examination that reminds me of the best impulses of the Simpsons, a breaking of the third wall of painting. —Evan Pricco