Paris • At Espace Lafayette-Drouot we can immerse ourselves in the work of Banksy
The exhibition shows on the walls images of his most famous works
The mystery of Banksy has contributed to his dazzling fame. His illegal works of art scattered around the world arouse interest
There are artistic experiences that make followers and detractors but do not leave one indifferent, given their impact. This is the case of Banksy, the British artist who has brought Street Art back to the heart of the international scene. The Espace Lafayette-Drouot offers, until December 31st, “The World Of Banksy - The Immersive Experience”, an exhibition that traces the entirety of his work. On two floors and more than 900m², the exhibition offers an overview of the artist’s creations across the world: from the walls of London to those of New York, Paris, Venice and Bethlehem.
He manages to offer himself monumental marketing, paradoxically without any investment and becoming one of the most well-known artists
Everything is reproduced identically by a collective of street artists, all as anonymous as Banksy himself. The mystery of Banksy has contributed to his dazzling fame. The artist who scatters illegal works of art around the world generates interest. The public demands that street art enter museums, and Banksy allows it to do so. His work manages to offer monumental marketing, paradoxically without any real investment, to the point that the Bristol artist has become one of the most talked about and well-known artists in the world, although no one knows his face.
With Banksy, the work is born from the underlying message, from the controversy that ensues. So an artist who makes communication his poetics and Instagram and Twitter his gallerists, exposes his subversive satire on the walls of cities around the world: works such as Girl with Balloon, Kissing Coppers, Love is in the Air, Well Hung Lover and Sweeping it under the Carpet propose a political and social criticism difficult not to share.
A representation that is close, in form and speed of fruition, to advertising. Banksy has left several traces in Paris, many of which have disappeared quickly. Among them we have The Man and the Dog next to the Sorbonne, erased by a layer of paint and election posters, the Mourning Figure painted on a door of the Bataclan, as a tribute to the victims of the attacks, stolen a few weeks after the execution, and the Mouse next to the Pompidou Center, a tribute to the art of pochoir born during May of 1968, stolen one night from a truck that seemed to be doing maintenance work, all documented by the cell phone of a sleepless neighbor. Now we have this exhibition that places on the wall images that appear and disappear, victims and perpetrators of their own success and their illegality. An exhibition that is obviously not official.
