YUE MIN JUN - 2008
The 2008 collaboration between KAWS and Chinese contemporary artist Yue Min Jun resulted in a surreal mashup figure that fused Yue’s iconic laughing self-portraits with KAWS’s X-eyed aesthetic, released in an edition of 500 for approximately $200.
Retail Price: $200
Edition Size: 500
KAWS and Yue Minjun teamed up in 2008 to create a striking vinyl figure that brought together both artists’ signature styles—Min Jun’s wide-mouthed, laughing self-portraiture and KAWS’s cartoonish subversion marked by X-eyes and exaggerated form. The figure stands roughly 12 inches tall and features Yue’s distinct smiling face posed in mid-laugh, dressed in simple clothing and finished with KAWS’s unmistakable sculptural language. The result is both humorous and uncanny, transforming Yue’s conceptual exploration of identity and mass culture into a tangible collectible object.
The piece was produced by Chinese art collective Cerealart and released in a limited edition of 500, with a retail price of around $200. It was sold through specialty art toy retailers and galleries, with distribution largely focused in Asia. Though it diverges from KAWS’s core Companion universe, this figure holds major significance as a bridge between street art and the high-concept Chinese contemporary art movement. It is rarely seen on the resale market today and has become a sleeper grail for collectors looking to trace KAWS’s global reach during the late 2000s.
