
THE WORLD OF BANKSY
The truth is that most of his fans don’t really want to know who he is and have loudly protested during the last years any attempts to unmask him. But they do want to follow his upward trajectory from the outlaw spraying walls in Bristol, England, during the 1990s to the artist whose work commands hundreds of thousands of dollars in the auction houses of Britain and America. Today, he has bombed cities from Vienna to San Francisco, Barcelona to Paris and Detroit. And he has moved from graffiti on gritty urban walls to paint on canvas, conceptual sculpture and even film, with the guileful documentary Exit through the Gift Shop, which was nominated for an Academy Award.
It is worth noting that on May 21, 2007 Banksy was selected to receive an award for Greatest Living Briton. Along with other artists like Shepard Fairey, Zevs, D*Face, and Ron English, he is credited with transforming graffiti from the typical “bubble writing” style of the 1980s to the “narrative-driven street art” of today.
Banksy’s reception on a universal scale also legitimized graffiti as a viable form of public art, furthering debate between vandalism as criminal activity and vandalism as an artist’s creative medium (in a way, becoming a symbol of freedom). Many of his works remain on buildings and other public spaces because of their contemporary value, even if at the time of their creation, they were seen as illegally concocted. In fact, many building owners have benefitted from becoming “owners” of an original Banksy.
Exhibition Opening Hours: Daily from 13:30am to 23:00pm and on Weekends from 10:00am to 23:00pm.
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