Written By Nina Jones
Who is Mr Brainwash?
ThierryGuetta or Mr Brainwash by name is a graffiti artist/Pop artist/film maker. MrBrainwash said, “The reason I chooseto call myself Mr Brainwash or MBW is because artists always brainwashpeople” in my opinionhe brainwashes people in a different way.
Fromthe film “Exit through the gift shop”it reassures thatsome of his artwork he made is random. For example in one of the painting hestolen, he added an eye patch…and he sold it for 10,000 dollars.
Why is he famous?
I would like to talk about Thierry Guetta first. Thierry is French. He was theowner of a vintage clothing store. He enjoys filming. He films everything frombeautiful scenery to himself brushing his teeth. The question is how could hebecome a street artist?
One day Thierry visited his cousin “space invader” invader works with tiles with aliens on them and stick themaround the streets (mosaic).Thierry starts to follow his cousin around and experiencethe graffiti’s life (sneaking around at night). He then starts to film other graffiti artist, whicheventually leads him to Shepard Fairey (founder of OBEY).
A few weeks after Banksy (British graffiti artist) called Thierry and ask if Thierry wants to film Banksy.Banksy was known worldwide but remained anonymous. After following Banksy around EVERYWHERE Thierry starts to get the idea of graffiti.
Thierrymade a documentary but turned out into a flop. Banksy then told Thierry to go out and make some art.
He renamedhimself Mr Brainwash and had his first exhibition in 2008.The main reason why30,000 visitors went is because Mr Brainwash asks Banksy and Shepard to promote him, which reached attention to thousands.
What do you think his work isabout?
I think what he meant by “lifeis beautiful” isthat he looks to art and entertainment as the subject of his work. I went tohis exhibition and the theme is mainly pop art (ICONs).It’sall about the bright colours.Big, Bold and Bright paintings represents thebright things that could happen in life. Some of his paintings are monochrome.
Which is your favouritepiece from the exhibition?
My favourite piece from theexhibition is his broken vinyl portrait of Bob Marley. The thing is all of hisother artwork is not him, but when I lookedat this portrait…its different. They look like they have been drawn with stencils,but actually they are made out of broken pieces of vinyl and CDs. The facial expressions were achieved by using quarter inch vinylcuts, while chiseled CDs were used to reproduce the shine of sunglasses. WhichI find it really interesting and that he was really clever.
Do you like his work? Why or Why not.
I do like the work, but I’m not convinced that he made it.
“Guetta employs famous artistic and historicimages, many of which are copyrighted, and amends the originals in sometimes slight, sometimessignificant ways. A number of critics have observed that his works stronglyemulate the styles and concepts of Banksy.”
What I do like about the work isthat it resembles Banksy’s work .Maybe because he was with Banksy for a longtime.some of his work even has Banksy’s art on it. If Guetta change and createhis own art like the vinyl and CD pieces he would be more successful as inpeople would respect him more.
