Exit Through the Gift Shop

A few years ago I became acquainted with the world of Street Art whilst exploring Los Angeles on a very normal day. I was driving through the Sunset Strip and I came across this image: 

I had no clue what it was or who had done it, but I loved it on sight. Living in Southern California and spending much of my life driving through Los Angeles, I was no stranger to graffiti. Graffiti was never attractive to me, graffiti has always been more of a dirty, ridiculous, ugly nuisance to me, and none of it qualified as art. This image is a cousin of graffiti, it has all the elements: spray paint on a public wall done illegally, but this wasn’t just graffiti, this image was art. I just didn’t have the correct name for it yet.

So I went home and immediately Googled “graffiti” and “Hitchcock” and in .64 seconds, the above image was spat back out to me in different forms. I became intrigued, and from that moment on, I began to learn about the Street Art Movement. Immediately, the creator of the Graffiti Hitchcock, Mr. Brainwash, became my favorite Street Artist. After exploring the works of Mr. Brainwash, the internet opened me up to different artists like Above and Shepard Fairey. Then Juxtapoz became my favorite magazine and I started to read about awesome people like Ron English. Then I started to become extremely interested in an artist named El Mac and his associate artist Retna. And of course, I became interested in the internationally infamous artist Banksy. I got to a point where I over-saturated myself in their world; I would actively look for new street art in LA, I spent so much time in the art section of bookstores exploring the street art books that I had never seen before, and on a constant daily basis, I spent an excessive amount of time exploring the work of street artists on the internet.

Eventually, I reached the peak of my street art obsession, and I started to gravitate out of that world. I think I stopped paying such close attention to street art because I realized I would never be a street artist, and I was jealous of all these people. These artists are so attractive and got to be of such importance of me because they painted for the sake of art, not for a commission, and not for anyone else. These artists have a passion for art that transcends their need to be law abiding citizens or keep normal sleep hours. Aside from being extremely jealous of their natural talent, I was just jealous of their passion. I wanted it. I craved the passion to forget everything going on in the world, forget the consequences and just live life. Maybe its not that they threw caution to the wind, its just that they knew the danger and did it anyways. They’re brave. Passionate and Brave. I wanted that, still want that, and I was jealous of all of these artists. So in my jealousy, I stopped paying attention to their world.

I couldn’t help but get back in it though. El Mac has done some amazing work over the past year, and I had to go ahead and accept the fact that I’d never be a street artists, so I learned to love the medium again. El Mac and Above have become favorites of mine for so many reasons, but mainly because their work looks like it belongs in the best museums in the world.

 

(El Mac)

El Mac’s work looks like it was done with a stroke of a paintbrush and not the spray of a can. He is a master of his medium, and even people who completely detest graffiti in all types can’t help but take notice of his amazing skill. His work is all over Los Angeles, and its become apart of the cultural landscape.

So then this past year, the most infamous street artist in the world makes a movie about street art, and it becomes the hot documentary of the year. Exit Through the Gift Shop is a film about street art by a street artist, but it does more than tell the story of street art, it tells the story of the discovery of street art.

Exit Through the Gift Shop even mirrored my own discovery of street art, of course, I wasn’t a man with a camera following artists around the world to catch them at work, but I was a young woman curious enough to follow the work of artists and understand their work. My street art journey has come full circle with this film. I expected Exit Through the Gift Shop to be all about Banksy, which I didn’t mind at all and which was my intention. He’s the most mysterious street artist in the world and I’d love a further education on the man. But this film wasn’t about Banksy, it was about the evolution of a medium of art from the street level to the museums. This film ended up being about the birth of a new street artist, my favorite street artist, Mr Brainwash. Needless to say, I loved this documentary. It reminded me why I fell in love with the street art movement to begin with. I gained an insight on artists and art I had never heard of before and reminded me why I loved artists like Shepard Fairey, Space Invader, and Above.

Exit Through the Gift Shop is an indie darling that’s unlikely to make it to the Academy Awards, but would be a great entrance and possible surprise winner. But thats exactly the story of street art, it has a cult following that never was likely to be a mainstream entity, but somehow, it’s become a surprise winner.

(Lucky for the world, this film is streaming on NetFlix.)