Looking For Banksy

British guerilla artist/prankster Banksy is in town. His five-day show Barely Legal opened in L.A. last week, with much fanfare and commotion -- as reported in Blogging L.A.

Featuring a painted, live elephant in a warehouse decorated as a living room, the show is a "metaphor for problems people are uncomfortable talking about". Though the installation follows Banksy's m.o. of denouncing society's illnesses, he seems to have forgotten a crucial detail: animal rights. No wonder he attracted the ire of local activists.

Banksy's démarche and protean art are refreshing. But not in this form. Better the "traditional" Banksy, as described in the N.Y. Times:

Banksy makes a habit of not revealing himself in public, a practice that is part survival technique and part publicity ploy, but he has shown projects in the United States. Most notoriously, he carried his own artworks into four New York institutions last year — the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum and the American Museum of Natural History — and hung them on the gallery walls, next to other paintings and exhibits, without guards’ taking notice. He has performed similar stunts at museums in Britain.

Earlier this month, Banksy surreptitiously placed a blow-up doll dressed as a Guantánamo detainee inside the fence of the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at Disneyland, where it apparently remained for more than an hour before park officials shut down the ride and removed it. Recently he also smuggled 500 altered versions of Paris Hilton’s new CD into record stores around Britain and placed them in the racks.

[also: Banksy in LAWeekly & L.A. Times + video]
photos: elephant Blogging L.A./others Banksy