Mr. Brainwash, aka Thierry Guetta, holding court over his maze on West 13th Street

“If you do something you love, you become an icon, because you do it so well that in one moment, everybody appreciates it,” says Thierry Guetta, leaning back in a paint-splattered Eames lounge chair in the middle of his newest exhibition, Icons. The street artist-turned gallery sensation went on to talk about his time spent decorating the walls and sidewalks of New York: “The street is just a large gallery to me. Even the people that don’t like it are obligated to see it. There are no rules on the street, there is just freedom. Thousands of people can see it.”

During the first week of his debut New York show, it’s safe to say that no one could have anticipated the turnout that the gallery at 415 West 13th Street has seen. “People started lining up at five o’clock in the morning to get into the gallery, because they knew they were going to get a screen print.” In the few days since the show has been open, it’s received an incredible amount of foot traffic, attributed directly to the marketing phenomenon behind Guetta’s show, his alter ego, Mr. Brainwash.

Mr. Brainwash's Street Art in the Meatpacking District

A highly excitable man with a wild nest of black and gray curls sitting underneath his signature fedora, Brainwash spoke to me through an old pair of aviators, their lenses splattered with paint. I questioned their practicality, but it just adds to the “Mr. Brainwash starter kit,” complete with a pair of old sneakers and jeans so thoroughly covered in every shade of paint imaginable, it almost seems contrived. Almost. Until he starts speaking about his art, frantically moving around the 15,000 square foot gallery. “So the other day I was hanging this painting of Madonna and I thought that I would like to color her face more.” He reached up to said painting and recreated smearing paint on his hands and rubbing it across her eyes and mouth. I said I liked it. “I’m always added to my work, even years from now, I will look at something and want to change it. I’m not a guy who gets mad when someone is carrying one of my paintings and he drops it. I’m not going to run up to him and yell at him about how he destroyed it and it’s worth so much money. I’m going to say ‘You know what, it looks beautiful.’ Accidents can improve work. I accept everything that happens to me in a good way. It’s always enjoyment to me.” I considered testing this theory by reaching up and ripping a piece of vinyl off the broken-record collage on the canvas that we stood admiring, but knowing what I do about how much his work has been going for since his first show, I decided against it.

From Mr. Brainwash's "Icons"

As we strode through the gallery, the door never stopped opening. People were in and out all day, some staying for hours at a time and reclining on the furniture with friends. The look on their faces was a calm, satisfied one. They could understand the art they were seeing and enjoy it. It’s wasn’t overly cerebral for the Sunday afternoon browsers, tire kickers, and tourists.

Amidst the chaos, SPREAD ArtCulture was able to get him to sit down (not an easy task) and give us the details on his new work and artistic philosophies.

SPREAD ArtCulture: Tell us about your show. What makes someone an icon?

Mr. Brainwash: It’s people who really give deep effort in life and make something out of it. And what I like about icons, there are some people who come from nothing. Take Jimi Hendrix: I’m sure he came from a poor family and things, but he had the passion in life and he had something he wanted to do. He was not just about money or success but it was about believing in something he loved. If you do something you love, you become an icon, because you do it so well that one moment everybody appreciates it. It’s like the guy from Twitter who is twenty-five. To do something so giant that everybody in the world are using what he did and he’s twenty-five! It’s for me to show the people that you can do it. There’s a possibility you just have to do what you love in life. All of the people (in this exhibit) they’re just normal people, just like everybody else. Somewhere it’s like giving a message to the ordinary people that you can do it. Just go for it.

SAC: Your work is influenced, quite clearly, by some of today’s commercial art frontrunners: Shepard Fairey, Banksy, and Warhol’s ubiquitous pop art portraits. How is what you’re doing different from what they’ve already done?

Mr. B: When I did my first show, a lot of people said, “He looks like this, it looks like this guy’s,” but somewhere, it’s like I’ve said, you cannot judge somebody by their first show. You have to let them evolve. Like my new show, “Icons,” I don’t see any resemblance of any other artists today. You couldn’t say that you see Shepard (Fairey)’s work. I don’t see it. You couldn’t say, “This looks like a Banksy.” Little by little, I’m finding my way of being my own artist. I don’t believe that nobody doesn’t look at someone else. That’s what the recycle of the world is. It’s like me putting a taxi in a box. I’ve never seen it before and it’s something that I wanted to do.

SAC: What are you doing to further culture?

Mr. B: I don’t think too much, the only thing I do is try to do something that will make people happy. I’m not here to judge myself or what’s going to happen to me in my life. You can’t judge someone without knowing him, you need to give him time to do his own thing. During my first show, they were trying to judge me and I asked them to “Let me go, it’s my first show. You’ll see if I’m a copycat or if I’m good or bad.” You cannot get away from talent. If you have it, you have it.

SAC: Do you have talent?

Mr. B: Talent is something that is a judgment. I just work. My talent is just to work. Every single day is another life to me. One life, one day. The next day is another life. You have to be in the moment. I do everything with passion. You can have talent, but not use it. There’s a million people who are more talented than I am, but maybe they don’t work to get it all out.

SAC: Are you going to keep filming?

Mr. B: I don’t know. I’m so involved with making art now, I don’t have the time. I did it for so long: twelve years non stop. I have more than thirty-thousand hours of footage. I’m going on another path.

SAC: What do you want people to think and feel about your art when they come into this exhibition space and see your work for the first time?

Mr. B: I want people to have fun. I want for them to be able to do something with it, to get influenced by it and maybe go home and start doing some art of their own. Right now, sitting here with you, I hear kids running around and to me, this is the best thing possible. I didn’t do anything wrong with this show. It would come with too strong a message, because maybe a kid would see it and not understand it. You can bring people from two years old to seventy-five years old and they can enjoy the show. I will let the other artists be controversial. I just want people to smile.

"There are no rules or judgement in the world of art for me." -Mr. Brainwash

"Polarized" by Donna Cleary

Manhattan’s Leo Kesting Gallery has something that all galleries in New York have been striving for as of late. It’s not just their pristine location (812 Washington Street at Gansevoort, right on the cusp of the Meatpacking District in the West Village), and it’s not only their preternatural artist-scouting (Daniel Edwards, sculptor-extraordinare responsible for “Paris Hitlon Autopsy,” among others). Leo Kesting is a very wide stride ahead of the pack because of the panache they inject back into the art world, making it young and fresh and enjoyable to immerse oneself in. On this tree-lined Village street, the gallery that reins supreme is that which doesn’t pander to a collector who graces the opening, rather, it is the artist who is the center of attention. It’s hard to imagine this ever not being the case.

The grandiloquently loquacious gentlemen that are the faces of Leo Kesting (John Leo and David Kesting) offer this sprinkling of insight into their newest gallery-sensation in the making, Donna Cleary and her debut show, The X Spot: “As digital modern communication lays the foundation for our new relationships, has the unique touch and feel of personal contact grown tired from public space and retreated to the bedrooms of our adult population? With the addition of words like ‘unfriend’ and ’sexting’ to our vocabulary, is it possible to capture human emotion through digital expression? The unique though now very private human touch in our digital age is explored in Donna Cleary’s The X Spot, an exhibition of cross hatched charcoal drawings.”

"Crash Dummies" by Donna Cleary

During her opening last week, Donna Cleary was able to break away from her fervent devotees and talk to SPREAD ArtCulture about what made her show such an interpersonal experience, while focusing on a theme that is traditionally solitary.

SPREAD ArtCulture: Let’s get right down to it: What’s the big idea with your show? Why the massive pieces of seemingly anonymous human contact, or lack thereof?

Donna Cleary: The big idea is the difference between digitial communication and the face-to-face communication that takes place between two people. I’m really playing with the idea of digital distance, and its contrast to this type of communication where you’re reading body language and gesture. We’ve sort of gotten away from that in our culture now. [Gallery Director David Kesting says of the show: "The X Spot clearly parlays a direct link between the X generation and the new human interaction that has been birthed with it. In this exhibition, Donna Cleary uses a classical approach to figurative illustration to dialog the intimacy promised in online dating testimonials."]

DC: There’s an image called “The Winking Smily Face,” and it shows two people standing side-by-side texting each other and they’re in their underwear in this really intimate setting, and it kind of reminded me of the idea of where people are “sexting.” There’s this disconnect between reality and what you can put in a text.

"Unsaid" by Donna Cleary

SAC: How are these pieces different from your previous work?

DC: I’ve been evolving to this point. I’ve always been very interested in looking at life from all different angles and a big influence most recently was that I got a divorce a few years ago and my life turned upside down. I started to analyze relationships and look at the after-effects of that: going online and dating, building new relationships. My piece “Kept” demonstrates the idea of trying to get out of a relationship and being held back.

SAC: You’re quite adept at capturing the romantic and raw essence of your subjects.

DC: If you’re going to use a figure, you have to be an expert on body language, and I’m an expert on body language…From before, going back to the original theme of digital distance, these have no context (backdrops), you don’t know where they are. They have the anoyminity because you’ll never see anyone’s face. They could be anywhere or anybody. The anonymity was intentional to mirror this digital age we’re living in.

"Unheard" by Donna Cleary

The X Spot is running at Leo Kesting through February 7, 2010.

Leo Kesting Gallery