Bansky: The Street is a Canvas, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid

Measures: 150 x 100 cm

Rooted in the urban reality of the entire planet, Bansky communicates to us, with ironic language, the problems, contradictions and the major issues of today. The characters he uses are irreverent but also innocent and recurrent: monkeys, rats, policemen, children and even members of the British royal family, all of them applied with the stencil technique on the walls of the most diverse cities. He adopted this form of expression because it allows him to act quickly and avoid being caught by the police. This mode of visual protest allowed him to access a very heterogeneous audience, making him one of the favorite artist of the younger generations.

Chocolate Donut, by Bansky (2009)

Technique: screenprint on paper / Medidas: 54 x 76 cm

Technique: screenprint on paper / Measures: 50,6 x 34,7 cm

Technique: spray on wood / Measures: 120 x 84,5 cm

The exhibition begins in a room with three screens that go through all the graffiti that he made, together with a map that indicates the place where each intervention took place. Then, in different rooms, we find the screenprint reproductions (limited edition) of the originals. These reproductions are not questioned (according to the gallery signs), because they have the consent of the artist and the technological advances to allow it, in addition to justifying and endorsing the exhibition.

Monkey Parliament, by Bansky (2009)

Technique: offset litograph / Measures: 53 x 84 cm

While Banksy is known as an urban artist and an art market denier, he did not limit himself to working solely on the street, but instead created works on canvas that were auctioned at outrageous prices. Let's recall that Girl with a Balloon, which was sold for more than one million pounds, was self-destroyed after its sale to show the artist's rejection. The image of the girl refers to hope and was painted by Banksy in several places. In 2004 he began to make screenprints for sale.

Photograph

Photograph 

In his book "Wall and Piece" (London, 2005) he tells that, at least, he painted 32 representations of rats in his first years as an artist. If we consider that we are in 2021 and that rats were reproduced in subways and even in the bathroom of his house during the pandemic, there must already be hundreds of them. Bansky says that these rodents exist without permission, that they are hated, hunted and persecuted, however, they are still capable of subverting entire civilizations and adds that, if you are a dirty, insignificant person and nobody loves you, rats are the role model to follow. The only work - not reproduced - that is exhibited in the exhibition is a piece of wall with a rat. It is protected inside a closed showcase, perhaps so that no one, not even Banksy, can intervene it.

Love is in the Air, also known as The Flower Thrower, was the work chosen to promote the show and is possibly Banksy's best-known work. The drawing portrays a protester who is participating in a street riot and whose face is hidden by a handkerchief. At first glance it seems to be throwing an object or a bomb, but when we look more closely we see that it is a bouquet of flowers. The silhouette of the man tries to take us back to those activists of the 60s, who took to the streets in Paris to demonstrate against the status quo and became the forerunners of urban art.

The exhibition, which consists of hundreds of reproductions, goes through the works of the urban artist and allows us to meet an activist who denies the market (although he is eventually subjugated by it) and tries to keep us aware of the problems that surround us and that we sometimes not see.