Irony is a dish best served cold. And in the elusive British street artist Banksy’s mockumentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, that irony is almost venomous. We’re not quite sure if the whole movie is staged or real, but we have a nagging feeling that whatever the arrangement, Banksy has one goal in mind: To make fun of his French counterpart Theirry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash, whose works now fetch equal, if not a higher price at the galleries. That, or Banksy is merely making fun of the ridiculous nature of the art world and, by extension, himself.
The film begins with the story of Guetta, a boutique owner who loves to record everything on video as a hobby. He does that aimlessly for a while until he encounters a street artist named Invader and becomes interested in his work. That is soon followed by Guetta’s encounters with Shepard Fairey of Obey fame and then Banksy, whom Guetta is so utterly fascinated with he begs to be allowed to document his art process (a scheme that will later come back to bite him). After recording hundreds of hours of footage, Guetta comes up with the abominable cut-and-paste mess that is Life Remote Control, which Guetta deems his masterpiece but is for Banksy a static nightmare (“It was at that point that I realized that maybe Thierry wasn’t actually a film maker, and he was maybe just someone with mental problems who happened to have a camera,” he says).
An undeterred Guetta then goes on to give street art a try (through Banksy’s encouragement, actually) and adopts the name Mr. Brainwash. He gets in over his head and launches himself with a massive show of his own Warhol derivatives to huge success in LA, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Exit Through the Gift Shop is either a massive art prank or a self-referential mockumentary. In any case, it’s not boring and the trick, if that’s what it is, works—it has generated more than a couple of million dollars through film screenings and DVD sales since its release two years ago. Like Banksy’s best street work, it pushes and prods our gullibility buttons and sends the mind swirling with questions of artistic authenticity and intent. That in itself may be his greatest artistic achievement.
Nov 4, 11, 7:30pm. Moving Image Gallery, SAM at 8Q. $10 from Sistic.