Artist: KAWS (Brian Donnelly)
Title: Running Chum #3
Year: 2000
Medium: Screenprint on Arches 88
Image Size: 69 × 55 cm (27 1/4 × 21 3/4 in)
Edition: 50 — signed, dated and numbered lower edge
Publisher: Kawsone, Brooklyn
Provenance: Private Collection
Type: Early limited edition screenprint — 2000

Description:

Running Chum #3 (2000) is a rare and historically significant early print from KAWS — produced at a pivotal moment in his trajectory, when Brian Donnelly was transitioning from anonymous street interventions and illegal billboard subversions to a recognised studio practice with its own publishing infrastructure. Published by Kawsone, Brooklyn — KAWS's own imprint, established to distribute his early print editions directly — in an edition of just 50, this work predates by years the global market recognition that would make his editions some of the most commercially sought-after in contemporary art.

The "Chum" character — one of KAWS's earliest and most personally significant creations, the companion figure whose X-crossed eyes and simplified cartoon anatomy would evolve over the following decade into the globally recognised Companion — is depicted here in motion, running, the energy and spontaneity of the street-art context from which KAWS emerged still entirely present in the composition. The Arches 88 paper — a premium unsized cotton rag historically associated with screenprinting, valued for its ability to absorb ink without bleed while maintaining the flatness essential to KAWS's graphic vocabulary — gives the impression a surface quality and an archival stability that distinguish it from the ephemeral street materials of his earlier practice.

At this stage of his career, KAWS was still working in the intimate Brooklyn milieu that shaped his sensibility — producing editions by hand, distributing them through his own channels, maintaining the DIY ethics of the street art world while developing the studio discipline that would carry him into major gallery representation and international institutional recognition. An edition of 50 from the year 2000 — signed, dated, and numbered by the artist — is among the scarcest categories of KAWS's published work, and this impression comes from a private collection, adding a further layer of documented provenance.

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