Banksy comes to downtown L.A.

I just returned from the Banksy show in a warehouse south of downtown, and I was wondering how one could succinctly explicate Banksy's artwork to one who is unfamiliar with his antics. Do you know Shepherd Fairy's "Obey Giant" phenomenology experiment? Robbie Conal's political portraits or Space Invader's urban mosaics? No disrespect to any of those guys, but they are the surface dwellers of the underground art movement; Banksy is a Morlock in comparison. He is so far underground that he can't even come to his shows or let his identity be known lest he be arrested.

Recently, he installed what looked like a hooded Guantanamo prisoner at the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride in Disneyland. He also reverse-shoplifted 500 Paris Hilton CDs in something like 42 record stores all over the U.K., replacing them with his own discs (mixed by Danger Mouse) and artwork which carried the message that the heiress is vapid and talentless. Pretty obvious, but apparently there are people out there who don't know that yet. There is a video installation at the show (across from the live elephant spray-painted with a faux flocked wallpaper pattern) that explains how he accomplished these and some other guerilla art installations.

As I've previously posted, my camera was lost in translation, so I snapped these shots with my SLVR:





Much of his art works on several levels: there is one painting of a guy selling 'Destroy Capitalism' T-shirts for $30 in a booth, with people lined up to purchase them. That's a fine comment on our consumerist society in itself, but he also plays with the notion that many people are sheep and need to be told what to buy, where to shop, and who to follow -- the first few buyers in line could be anarchists or punks, but towards the end of the queue there's a suburban mom with a baby stroller.

It's a really interesting, subversive and thought-provoking show -- and naturally it's free. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys questioning the status quo. Or anyone who enjoys seeing pink and gold Indian elephants.

A message from Banksy, via fliers at the show:

There's an elephant in the room.
There's a problem that we never talk about.

The fact is that life isn't getting any fairer.

- 1.7 Billion people have no access
to clean drinking water.
- 20 Billion people live below the poverty line.
- Every day hundreds of people are made to feel
physically sick by morons at art shows telling them
how bad the world is but never actually
doing something about it.

Anybody want a free glass of wine?

Banksy, Los Angeles 2006