In 1996, Brian Donnelly, now known by his moniker KAWS, moved to New York and met fellow street artist Barry McGee, who had a key to the city’s phone booths. KAWS soon devised a strategy: break into the booths, remove their advertising posters, add his own graffiti to the posters, and then reinstall them back in the booth another night. “When I started painting on advertisements, it occurred to me that the ad really set the work in a specific time,” KAWS once said. Indeed, his takes on Calvin Klein advertisements, featuring a young Kate Moss and Christy Turlington, capture the cultural moment of the late 1990s. These early works also reveal KAWS’s first experimentation with his now-signature skull and bones motif, seen on his “Companion” characters and other vinyl toys. While many of these original advertisements are now lost or destroyed, KAWS released a series of collectible posters featuring this body of work in 1999.

A relic from the early days of streetwear culture in 2001, this mini poster features a photograph by renowned photographer David Sims reworked by KAWS in his interventionist style. A Kimpsons Krusty the Clown is in the background while a KAWS Bendy wraps itself around the model. On the reverse is information about KAWS's exhibition at Parco Gallery in Tokyo. Sponsors include Supreme and A Bathing Ape, at the time cult brands that have now become part of the mainstream.