Tag Archives: exit through the gift shop

WHEATPASTES!!

Well, I was gearing up to move on from the whole street art thing I’ve been doing for the past week or so, but then I watched Exit Through the Gift Shop.  I know it came out like a year ago, but lamely I had yet to see it…

All I can say was it was fascinating. Both from the perspective of traveling along with the likes of Shephard Fairey, Banksy, and others during their nighttime escapades… the sheer scale of which, at times, are mind-boggling.  But also following the invention of Mr. Brainwash and his ability to completely infiltrate the conventional art scene with a little PR and a lot of hype, ultimately duping collectors into paying sh*t-tons of money for his seemingly inane pieces of rehashed pop-street-“art,” if you can call it that.  I can’t figure out if the guy’s an idiot or a genius.  But this article in the Economist (Con or can do) poses that his real success may lie in ability as a performance artist above all else…

In any case, right after watching the movie, I came across these large wheatpastes by three different artists…

I love this sleepy owl! The scale of it is quite impressive… I’m assuming it was a smaller sketch that was blown up during reproduction.  The girl below seems to be the same artist.

large wheatpaste, bart tracks, oakland graffiti, east bay wheat paste

oakland graffiti wheatpaste, owl wheatpaste, burl wheatpaste

Here’s a new one by Get Up I hadn’t seen yet…  It’s hard to tell from these pics but this one is larger than life… maybe 10 ft tall?

Get Up, Bart Track wheat paste, guy with phonograph wheatpaste

The one below looks to be a hand-drawn original and includes the words (and image) “Get on the Good Foot”. Makes me wonder if this artist has any relation to the KALX DJ The Good Foot who starts off every set list with James Brown’s “Get on the Good Foot.” Good stuff…

The Good Foot, Get on the Good Foot, oakland graffiti

True TrustoCorp.

What a weekend! Wow. I hope you all had as much fun as I did. I pretty much did it all, and I’ll be sharing some of the details throughout the week, but right now I want to share this very cool piece of street art. It’s a true TrustoCorp.

trustocorp, trustocorp street sign, trustocorp graffiti

A friend wrote in after my No Killing Anytime post to say that the series looked like the work of TrustoCorp. They certainly did, but they actually weren’t. They were wheatpastes that had been applied over existing real street signs. The way TrustoCorp does it is they manufacture real metal signs.

When this one caught my eye initially, I thought it was a real city sign. Woah, I thought, Berkeley really is progressive! (Sign was spotted right outside Looking Glass Photo on Telegraph Ave where the Pinhole Workshop was held yesterday… great fun… more on that later.) But as I got closer I spotted the TrustoCorp logo (the T inside the “wings”) and then this on the back…

trustocorp sign, trustocorp berkeley, real men use fists

I was particularly excited to see this piece of street art because the whole blogittersphere was abuzz last week with the sightings of possibly Banksy pieces in San Fran, and I was feeling a little left out…
http://spotsunknown.com/new-banksy-in-chinatown/
http://missionlocal.org/2010/04/famed-unseen-street-artist-banksy-marks-the-mission/

Folks aren’t sure if these are the real deal (they look pretty authentic to me) or the work of a copycat artist, but either way, it’s certainly great P.R. for the recent release of the new street art documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. The film had a sneak preview showing in S.F. on the 15th, and is now playing Bay-wide at a few select locations…

Exit Through the Gift Shop Showtimes

In any case, I think Mr. Banksy and the folks from TrustoCorp should make their way over to Oaktown! C’mon y’all, show us what you got…