June 18, 2008

The Great Los Angeles Brainwash

There was a rumor going around the Mr Brainwash private preview in Hollywood last night that the whole thing was, in fact, a hoax.
"Someone told me this is all a big joke," said my informant in hushed tones. "We're all being filmed, and then in a week they'll reveal that Mr Brainwash isn't who he says he is, and everyone will know just how stupid L.A. is for falling for it."
This was whispered to me as I hovered around a graffiti'd urinal, à la Duchamp, just one of many jarringly literal interpretations on display in the former CBS studio on Sunset Blvd.
Whatever the truth, Mr Brainwash is definitely real, at least: he's Thierry Guetta, a French filmmaker who became so obsessed with the street artists he was filming, he decided to become one himself, wheat-pasting stretches of L.A.'s La Brea corridor with black and white Banksy-style stencils.
And if Guetta is indeed out to ~~insult~~ test L.A.'s intelligence, then he's doing an audacious job of it—in this super-sized solo show, his first ever, Mr Brainwash manages to rip off pretty much every important artist of the last 500 years. The DuChamp urinal, the Van Gogh self portrait and a whole series of Warhol Marilyns, all tweaked, ad-busted and given the Brainwash treatment. (The only thing he hasn't re-worked, as far as I could tell, was the Mona Lisa.)
But that's not to say there weren't any original ideas inside this cavern of re-purposed greatness.
His larger installations were, for example, very striking--former editing bays filled with books and taped off, graffiti'd with the words "not finish"; a dog sculpture made from old telephones; a 15 feet high take-out bag, complete with receipt taped to the side; and a 30 foot high robot built entirely from (working) vintage TVs. "Look, that's totally L.A.," said a friend, pointing to a cage filled with film reels and car tires. She was right.
I asked Roger Gastman, publisher of street art magazine "Swindle", whether he thought the Mr Brainwash thing was an elaborate J.T. Leroy-esque hoax. "Um, no, I don't think so," he shrugged. "I mean, he exists. He's outside right now, riding a tricycle with a cast on his leg."
The next morning I asked Shepard Fairey, arguably the best-known graffiti artist in America, his thoughts on the conspiracy theory. "He's not a hoaxer," said Fairey. "He is, however, crazy."
Go see for yourselves.
Mr Brainwash, "Life Is Beautiful" continues through Sunday, June 22. At 6121 W Sunset Blvd @ El Centro, Hollywood, CA, 90028. Click here for opening hours.

June 18, 2008 in OPENINGS/LAUNCHES | Permalink

Comments

Look, the guy is an utter fake. He is so self absorbed that he doesn't even know that he is a creation of outside forces.

Posted by YES | Jun 23 2008 8:43PM

Dead on review, love it! I was at the show myself and kept wondering how can he get away with this. Everything felt like a joke, a total rip off of existing ideas and like you said, existing artists, past or present. However, I found the experience utterly delectable and basked in the audacious artistic deja-vu...It felt more like a massive retrospective of pop/street art than an original show but again the very fact that someone could pull it off so boldly and successfully is in itself inventive. I don't know if I'll ever be able to afford a real Warhol or Banksi but in the meantime I'm the shameless owner of a shameless copy!

Posted by POLO | Jun 19 2008 6:11PM