Banksy Barely Legal. Among irreverent prints and painted elephant
Famous for his difficult and ambiguous course of action, Barely Legal, the Banksy exhibition in Los Angeles, remains one of the most controversial and chatty events in recent years. In year 2006 Banksy, already known as one of the most influential contemporary street artists, has consecrated his enigmatic figure to the art world in his most personal way: through the most unbridled satire and bitter irony typical from the English writer’s social complaint.

For the occasion, Banksy prepared a great show, hidden up to the last from the public, and not only. Richard Duardo, the famous American typographer, with his team of Modern Multiples, was being contacted by Banksy – thanks to the colleague Shepard Fairey AKA OBEY – in previous months through busy and sporadic communications, until, ten days after the opening, the artist arrived in the USA with an extraordinary amount of work. The prints to be realized were baptized Barely Legal Print Set: six matrices for a minimum of 500 copies each. The project envisages a seventh work, which actually was never realized for chromatic complexity and time constraints.
Obliged at a frenetic pace to comply with the deadline, printers succeed to release the copies during the exhibition: from 500 of each matrix, only 100 were numbered, signed and branded by the artist. In addition to copies printed by Modern Multiples, only London’s Pictures of Wall has the permissions for two additional editions, all made by 2006: beyond this date, the original matrices were destroyed. Both editions are rare and represent a particular occasion in the history of contemporary art, indissolubly linked to the exhibition-event so discussed.

September 16, 2006 was the chosen date for the inauguration of the exhibition and his research was a real treasure hunt: the address of the spaces was not revealed to the public until the same morning by Banksy himself. The opening ceremony was attended by renowned artists in the art world and not only: Artists, curators, critics and collectors, but also celebrities, musicians and influential personalities. At the entrance of the dismantled industrial warehouse, a great surprise awaited visitors: An Indian elephant (for animal exploitation Banksy was severely criticized and denounced by animalists), decorated with a pattern used for wallpaper, circulated freely in the space; at the entrance, leaflets were distributed with the inscription:
«There is an elephant in the room. Twenty billions of people live below the poverty line.»

Equally penetrating was the irony that passed through all the serigraph of the Print Set: from the Pink pop pepto bismol of Grannies, depicting two old ladies engaged in embroidering wool sweaters with the words “PUNK IS NOT DEAD” and “THUG FOR LIFE”, through the sarcasm of the primitive Trolleys, where tribal hunters trawled carts of a supermarket, to the venomous joke of Morons, with his art collectors, who are trying to get a work that says “I can not believe you morons buy this shit”. Banksy again confirmed the intolerant irreverence of his social and political criticism, throwing against contemporary consumer society and the blindness of the population on hot issues.


On the occasion of the exhibition “Street Art From Basquiat to Banksy, the Kings of the Street”, from October 8, 2017, Artrust will also exhibit the famous works of LA Barely Legal Edition, dedicating a particular space to Banksy. The presentation will put in dialogue contemporary artists such as El Bocho, Mr. Brainwash and Pure Evil, some of the pioneers of American graffiti – SEEN, Cope2, Blade, etc. – and personality among the most charismatic and interesting ones from the past century, such as Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat.