Mr. Brainwash presents ICONS: "Bob Marley"
415 West 13th Street, NYC
by navema
Bob Marley: made of broken vinyls & CD on wood.
Bob Marley: made of broken vinyls & CD on wood.
ICONS show runs February 14th – March 31st, 2010
Los Angeles based French street artist, Mr. Brainwash (aka Thierry Guetta), celebrates his first solo show in New York with ICONS. Mr. Brainwash is the alter-ego of French immigrant Thierry Guetta, who now lives in Los Angeles. His preoccupation with street art and graffiti led him to years filming the people behind the work, and eventually he became an artist too.
This body of work is the result of traveling throughout Europe and the United States as the subject of Banksy's new documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop. This documentary about the process secretly premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2010. It wasn’t listed in the program, but quickly became the hottest ticket at the festival. Featuring famed street artists like Banksy, Ron English, Borf and Shepard Fairey, the viewer is able to watch the famous fiends at work. One of the most memorable scenes is of Banksy installing an inflatable replica of a Guantanamo torture victim right next to a roller coaster in The Happiest Place On Earth — Disneyland.
Being a trusted accomplice of Banksy is no small feat — and accomplice is perhaps a better word than friend, given that Banksy described Guetta as “maybe just someone with mental problems who happened to have a camera.”
Since his entrance onto the contemporary art scene in 2008 with his Los Angles show “Life is Beautiful”, Mr. Brainwash (Guetta) has raised a lot of questions, namely ‘is he for real?’ Guetta began to follow the exploits street artists’ Shepard Fairey and Banksy with a digital video camera, but soon Banksy turned the camera on Guetta, encouraging him to create his own persona, which is the end product of Exit Through the Gift Shop, the documentary being billed as ‘the world’s first street art disaster movie’. Critics and gallerists alike have written him off as a hack, or simply a regurgitation of Banksy and Shepard Fairey’s existing work.
Held in a two story converted gallery space, at 415 West 13th Street, the show features pop portraits, prints, and engaging large scale sculptures. An enormous multi-level space packed with jumbo canvases and installations, including a life-size horse made from tire treads. In the middle of the upper level was a pink-splattered can of paint so big you could hold a party inside it. Combining pop art sensibilities with graffiti culture, Mr. Brainwash’s relentless riffing on celebrity culture is at once familiar and colorful. He recasts Angelina Jolie as Marilyn Monroe, smothers a 7′ can of spray-paint with Louis Vuitton’s famous monogram, and recreates Jimi Hendrix on a canvas covered in crushed records. At the back of the room, almost hidden in the dark, was a classic NYC cab sealed inside life-sized Matchbox packaging.
The feeling of the show? A Warholian art revival with walls filled up with dozens of replicant Madonna images, as in Warhol's Campbell's Soup series, so much so that it could be difficult to say if the whole thing is just a joke or Mr. Brainwash really believes he is 'an original'. To underline his artistic personality, though, all the silkscreens were colored with spray paint or had some additional details.
Regardless of sentiment, Guetta’s work draws a crowd. Without endorsing or refuting his credibility as an artist, Brainwash certainly fulfilled the exhibitions’ namesake. Under his nom de guerre, Guetta created or reproduced images that are easily identifiable; the subjects are no longer individuals, but rather logos in our collective cultural memory.
For more about the artist, please visit: www.mrbrainwash.com
Mr. Brainwash presents ICONS: "Bob Marley"
415 West 13th Street, NYC
by navema
Bob Marley: made of broken vinyls & CD on wood.
Bob Marley: made of broken vinyls & CD on wood.
ICONS show runs February 14th – March 31st, 2010
Los Angeles based French street artist, Mr. Brainwash (aka Thierry Guetta), celebrates his first solo show in New York with ICONS. Mr. Brainwash is the alter-ego of French immigrant Thierry Guetta, who now lives in Los Angeles. His preoccupation with street art and graffiti led him to years filming the people behind the work, and eventually he became an artist too.
This body of work is the result of traveling throughout Europe and the United States as the subject of Banksy's new documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop. This documentary about the process secretly premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2010. It wasn’t listed in the program, but quickly became the hottest ticket at the festival. Featuring famed street artists like Banksy, Ron English, Borf and Shepard Fairey, the viewer is able to watch the famous fiends at work. One of the most memorable scenes is of Banksy installing an inflatable replica of a Guantanamo torture victim right next to a roller coaster in The Happiest Place On Earth — Disneyland.
Being a trusted accomplice of Banksy is no small feat — and accomplice is perhaps a better word than friend, given that Banksy described Guetta as “maybe just someone with mental problems who happened to have a camera.”
Since his entrance onto the contemporary art scene in 2008 with his Los Angles show “Life is Beautiful”, Mr. Brainwash (Guetta) has raised a lot of questions, namely ‘is he for real?’ Guetta began to follow the exploits street artists’ Shepard Fairey and Banksy with a digital video camera, but soon Banksy turned the camera on Guetta, encouraging him to create his own persona, which is the end product of Exit Through the Gift Shop, the documentary being billed as ‘the world’s first street art disaster movie’. Critics and gallerists alike have written him off as a hack, or simply a regurgitation of Banksy and Shepard Fairey’s existing work.
Held in a two story converted gallery space, at 415 West 13th Street, the show features pop portraits, prints, and engaging large scale sculptures. An enormous multi-level space packed with jumbo canvases and installations, including a life-size horse made from tire treads. In the middle of the upper level was a pink-splattered can of paint so big you could hold a party inside it. Combining pop art sensibilities with graffiti culture, Mr. Brainwash’s relentless riffing on celebrity culture is at once familiar and colorful. He recasts Angelina Jolie as Marilyn Monroe, smothers a 7′ can of spray-paint with Louis Vuitton’s famous monogram, and recreates Jimi Hendrix on a canvas covered in crushed records. At the back of the room, almost hidden in the dark, was a classic NYC cab sealed inside life-sized Matchbox packaging.
The feeling of the show? A Warholian art revival with walls filled up with dozens of replicant Madonna images, as in Warhol's Campbell's Soup series, so much so that it could be difficult to say if the whole thing is just a joke or Mr. Brainwash really believes he is 'an original'. To underline his artistic personality, though, all the silkscreens were colored with spray paint or had some additional details.
Regardless of sentiment, Guetta’s work draws a crowd. Without endorsing or refuting his credibility as an artist, Brainwash certainly fulfilled the exhibitions’ namesake. Under his nom de guerre, Guetta created or reproduced images that are easily identifiable; the subjects are no longer individuals, but rather logos in our collective cultural memory.
For more about the artist, please visit: www.mrbrainwash.com