Kaws: New Fiction review – an art show where you brush shoulders with virtual visitors

Serpentine North Gallery, London
This hybrid show of physical and digital works by US artist Brian Donnelly - also viewable in the video game Fortnite - could not be more of the moment

For decades, artists have worked across physical and digital canvases, especially in public installations, where a virtual component can lend a futuristic frisson to traditional works. The current brouhaha about NFTs - digital artworks to which proof of ownership can be bought, assigning currently indeterminate rights to the buyer - makes the Serpentine Gallery's New Fiction exhibition feel especially of the moment, however. The show (admission free) features physical and digital works by Kaws, AKA the Brooklyn-based artist Brian Donnelly, the digital works viewed via a third-party augmented reality app downloaded on to a smartphone.

Visitors must calibrate the app on arrival; point your phone camera at a QR code outside the gallery and the scene fills with towering, brightly painted figures, including an emaciated Cookie Monster-like character who sits, legs a-dangling, from the plinth above the entrance. Inside, you must again calibrate the app, at which point you wander around the rooms, figuratively brushing shoulders with virtual visitors" who also form part of the installation. It's an uncanny feeling seeing virtual characters observe physical works of art (typically, these days, it's us, the corporeal, who perennially gaze upon the digital), and the sense of discombobulation is compounded by the fact that the exhibit features actual brightly painted bronze statues.