Mr. Brainwash – Balloon Girl (22.5 x 22.5″)

Description

Mr. Brainwash, Balloon Girl is an original Silkscreen and Mixed Media on Paper with Stencil, Acrylic, Collage, and Spray Paint.  A one-of-a-kind artwork featuring Banksy’s iconic Balloon Girl. Mr. Brainwash’s special signature is on the back including a thumbprint and dollar bill sequence.  Artwork comes with official Mr. Brainwash certificate of authenticity with corresponding half dollar bill.

Balloon Girl is originally a 2002 mural by graffiti artist Banksy depicting a young girl letting go of a red heart-shaped balloon. Banksy has used a variant of this image in his 2014 campaign supporting Syrian refugees. Another variant Banksy created for the 2017 United Kingdom general election generated controversy after he offered free prints for some anti-Conservative voter, and he soon retracted the offer. A 2017 Samsung poll ranked Balloon Girl as the United Kingdom’s number one favorite artwork.

Mr. Brainwash (Thierry Guetta) is a French street artist and videographer known for his large-scale installations and prints of celebrities like Madonna, Kate Moss, and Marilyn Monroe. His practice of subverting cultural iconography and appropriation borrows from Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Banksy. Fellow street artist Alec Monopoly has said that he considers Mr. Brainwash a mentor.

According to the 2010 Banksy-directed film Exit Through the Gift Shop, Guetta was a proprietor of a used clothing store, where he began as a security guard, and amateur videographer who was first introduced to street art by his cousin, the street artist Invader, and who filmed street artists through the 2000s and “evolved” into an artist in his own right in a matter of weeks after an off-hand suggestion from Banksy.

A number of critics have observed that his works strongly emulate the styles and concepts of Banksy, and have speculated that Guetta is an elaborate prank staged by Banksy, who may have created the works himself. Banksy insists on his official website, however, that Exit Through the Gift Shop is authentic and that Guetta is not part of a prank.

His work sold for five-figure sums at his self-financed debut exhibit Life Is Beautiful, due, it is thought, to a mixture of an overheated and hyped street art market and – according to Banksy and Shepard Fairey as seen in Exit – his misuse of endorsements from Banksy and Fairey. The exhibit was held in Los Angeles, California, on June 18, 2008, and was a popular^[2] success. In 2009, Madonna paid Guetta to design the cover art for her Celebration album.

Mr. Brainwash Balloon Girl