If you're not already familiar with the work of UK street artist, Banksy, you need to take a minute to get acquainted by reading my short blog post from last year. Traditionally known for his distinctive graffiti and stencil style of art, he's taken an interesting turn with his first official show in NYC. The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill is a fake store/restaurant located at 89 Seventh Ave South (near Bleecker) which started as a project to draw attention to the relationship between humans and animals. The Wooster Collective website has a direct quote from Banksy himself:"New Yorkers don’t care about art, they care about pets. So I’m exhibiting them instead. I wanted to make art that questioned our relationship with animals and the ethics and sustainability of factory farming, but it ended up as chicken nuggets singing. I took all the money I made exploiting an animal in my last show and used it to fund a new show about the exploitation of animals. If its art and you can see it from the street, I guess it could still be considered street art."
Me, Lloyd and Christina went down this afternoon to check it out and it was simply awesome. I find myself bored with so much art but this was right in my wheel house - unique, creative and post-modern in both concept and delivery. The idea of an artist taking over an ordinary commercial space (with a parody of sorts) is simple yet so unique and effective (for me at least)! I've included some of the pictures of the installation I found online but it's worth noting that the work is all Hollywood-quality animatronics (mechanised puppets). There are swimming fish sticks, chicken McNuggets bobbing their heads into BBQ sauce and a chimp scratching himself and watching primate porn, among others. Really, really cool stuff. It's showing thru Halloween so if you're in NYC... get there!
FYI you should also check out Banksy's new street art around town as well - we stopped by Houston & MacDougal and Grand & Wooster. And to top off the day we had a Russell Simmons sighting in SoHo - he was cruising the streets on his dope old school bike!
--NY Times Article
--Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill Website
--Banksy's Website
NOTCOT: Banksy's Village Petstore & Charcoal Grill from Jean Aw on Vimeo.
1 comment:
sorry i missed the outing - I lost my phone last night and took that as a sign that I should stay in and do homework since i couldn't coordinate anyway. Poo...
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