IF BANKSY AND WARHOL HAD A BABY…
He’d make art like Mr. Brainwash (aka MBW; born Theirry Guetta).
French filmmaker Guetta, tried to make the ultimate documentary about graffiti art and spent almost ten years doing it, tailing the most renown and notorious street artists from city to city.
During the making of his film, he got really inspired to make his own art, starting out with hand-drawn stickers and stencils until he grew the balls to put up giant billboard-sized paste-ups. This is what Banksy had to say about him: “Mr. Brainwash is a force of nature, he’s a phenomenon. And I don’t mean that in a good way.”
And now, he’s having his first solo show, “Life Is Beautiful” .
And it is no stuffy affair.
Instead of showing at a gallery, he decided to put on a gargantuan exhibit at a 15,000 sq ft former TV studio. Over 300 new paintings, stencils, sculptures and prints along with an installation made from 100,000 shoes and 20,000 books, a life-size recreation of Edward Hopper’s early-morning diner classic “Nighthawks”, a 6 foot-tall bar-coded Mona Lisa, an 8-foot tall spray can and a 12-foot tall paper bag…among other stuff…are on view.
There’s also going to be a live jazz band, a bar, a DJ set from Shepard Fairey, movie projector installations, seven spare rooms with their own separate themes, life-sized art cutouts, double-decker views, a bank vault filled with modern gold, and a “stolen” piece of Marcel Duchamp’s artwork.
THIS is an event. If you’re in town you gotta go. If not, read more about him from this article in the LA Weekly. Click onto the paper’s Lurker blog and see his work pasted and sprayed all over L.A. as well as pieces from other artists like Shark Toof, Ekundayo, and Ping Ping.
“Life Is Beautiful” Exhibition
Opens June 18th at 7pm
Former CBS Studios - 6121 W Sunset Blvd @ El Centro
www.artshow2008.com
