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Jeff Gillette is a contemporary American artist based in Southern California. He is best known for his subversive 'slumscape' paintings ironically featuring Disney characters. He is often cited as the inspiration for Banksy's 2015 Dismaland theme park installation, in which he was a featured artist. [1]
Gillette was born in 1959 and grew up in the suburbs outside Detroit and drew a lot of creative inspiration from the TV show "The Wonderful World of Disney". When he visited the actual Disneyland theme park in 1978, he found himself disappointed by its artificiality, staying for only 30 minutes. As an artist, however, Disney characters, especially Mickey Mouse, continued to hold his interest.[ citation needed ]
Gillette dropped out of college in 1982 and began touring the most "beautiful and horrid landscapes" he could find, which included the Himalayas and Calcutta, India. [2] He later became a volunteer for Peace Corps. Many of the 'slumscapes' he paints are directly inspired by the residential slums he witnessed in his extensive travels. [3]
After moving to Orange County (where Disneyland is based) for a teaching position, he became inspired to combine the two distinct aesthetics of residential wastelands and theme parks in his work.
Gillette is a self-described pessimist, influenced by the writings of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. He describes his work as "taking the things people love and imposing the worst-case scenario [on them]". [4]
Gillette has been exhibiting his work since 1997, with his first solo show at Broadway Gallery in Santa Ana, CA. [5]
The style he is currently known for emerged in a solo show called "Slumscapes - Blasphemy Blowout," which depicted American fast food restaurants such as McDonald's against backdrops of slums and well-known cartoon figures juxtaposed with religious iconography. [6]
His 2010 solo show at Copro Gallery in Santa Monica, "Dismayland," was a commercial success and drew interest in his work from British artist Banksy. [7] The aesthetic and themes established here began to define him as an artist.
In 2015, Banksy contacted Gillette through his manager to purchase a “Minnie Hiroshima” painting (that became the official poster available at the Dismaland gift shop). [8] Afterwards, he invited Gillette to be in a group exhibition in England at what was then described as “an abandoned theme park” in Weston-super-Mare, Dismaland. [9] His pieces sold very quickly at the show. Gillette then began to show in London at the former Lawrence Alkin Gallery, now the Rhodes Gallery, and internationally elsewhere.
In 2017, he mounted a solo show at Gregorio Escalante Gallery in Los Angeles called "Total Dismay," that turned the exhibition space into an "art landfill." [10] In the show, he premiered a series of new paintings mounted on walls and priced thousands of dollars, while the floor was littered with paper prints that patrons would walk on top of and were for sale for $5. [11] [12]
In Spring 2015, Gillette was messaged on Facebook by Banksy's manager and invited to participate in a secretive group exhibition called Dismaland, a temporary art project organized by Banksy and built in the resort town of Weston-super-Mare, three hours outside of London. [13] The pop-up would be a fully functioning theme park designed as "a sinister twist on Disneyland." It opened on August 21, 2015 and ran until September 27. Banksy described it as a "family theme park unsuitable for children."
Including Gillette, the show featured 58 artists, such as Bill Barminski, Damien Hirst, Jenny Holzer, Peter Kennard, and Ben Long. Gillette premiered six new paintings on canvas for the pop-up as part of his "Dismayland" series. Banksy created ten new works and funded the construction of the exhibition himself. Approximately 4,000 tickets were available for sale per day, priced at £3 each. [14]
Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist, and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti executed in a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have appeared on streets, walls, and bridges throughout the world. His work grew out of the Bristol underground scene, which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. Banksy says that he was inspired by 3D, a graffiti artist and founding member of the musical group Massive Attack.
In art, appropriation is the use of pre-existing objects or images with little or no transformation applied to them. The use of appropriation has played a significant role in the history of the arts. In the visual arts, "to appropriate" means to properly adopt, borrow, recycle or sample aspects of human-made visual culture. Notable in this respect are the readymades of Marcel Duchamp.
Cartrain, often stylised cartяain, is a British artist associated with the graffiti urban art movement.
Ben Long is an English contemporary visual artist, known for large-scale public works that use everyday materials such as scaffolding in their construction. He lives and works in London.
Tom Christopher is an American painter known for his expressionist urban paintings and murals, mostly of New York City. Christopher began as a commercial artist, and has become internationally recognized with galleries and exhibitions in France, Germany and Japan.
The Tropicana, formerly a Lido site that once contained an outdoor swimming pool, is located in the seaside town of Weston-super-Mare in North Somerset, England. It is located on the Bristol Channel coast, on the southern section of the seafront.
Ben Moore is a British art curator, entrepreneur and artist. He is the founder and curator of Art Below, a contemporary art organisation that places art in public spaces and has had shows in England, Germany, Japan and the United States. He is also the founder and curator of Art Wars, an exhibition of designs based on the Imperial Stormtrooper helmets from Star Wars. In 2021, Moore was part of the Art Wars NFT project which resulted in massive losses for the purchasers of the NFTs and claims of copyright theft from artists whose physical work was reproduced without their permission.
The year 2015 in art involves various significant events.
Dismaland was a temporary art project organised by street artist Banksy in the seaside resort of Weston-super-Mare in Somerset, England. Prepared in secret, the pop-up exhibition at the Tropicana, a disused lido, was "a sinister twist on Disneyland" that opened during the weekend of 21 August 2015 and closed on 27 September 2015, 36 days later. Banksy described it as a "family theme park unsuitable for children." The aesthetic of the "bemusement park" was potentially inspired by the "Dismayland" series of paintings created by American artist Jeff Gillette, who also participated in the exhibition.
A pop-up exhibition is a temporary art event, less formal than a gallery or museum but more formal than private artistic showing of work. Pop-up exhibits are erroneously called pop-up museums, such as the Museum of Ice Cream but do not fit the International Council of Museums definition of a museum. The idea began in 2007 in New York City where space for exhibiting artistic work is very limited. Although the idea originated from New York City, pop-up exhibitions occur all around the world. A recent example is Banksy's Dismaland, which ran from August to September 2015.
Hanksy is the pseudonym for New York City-based street artist and parodist Adam Lucas, who also goes by Adam Himebauch. His artwork under the moniker Hanksy includes recreations of Banksy street art adapted to include a cartoon interpretation of actor Tom Hanks.
"Turf War" was the first major exhibition by artist Banksy, staged in a warehouse on Kingsland Road in London's East End in 2003.
Barely Legal was a show by graffiti artist Banksy, held in an industrial warehouse in Los Angeles, California, in 2006. The free show was held over the weekend of 16 September 2006.
Samson Young is a Hong Kong artist, working primarily in the mediums of sound performance and installations.
Jani Leinonen is a Finnish visual artist. Leinonen is known for his public artworks criticising capitalism by using the imagery and icons of corporate brands. He graduated from the Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts in 2002.
Ammar Abd Rabbo is a French-Syrian journalist and photographer, born in Damascus, Syria, in 1966.
Caitlin Cherry is an African-American painter, sculptor, and educator.
La Hara is a painting created by American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in 1981. The artwork, which depicts a skeletal police officer, sold for $35 million at Christie's in May 2017.
Show Me the Monet is a 2005 oil on canvas painting by graffiti artist Banksy. The work is an appropriation of Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series. Banksy has appropriated Monet’s paintings to now depict a traffic cone and two shopping carts polluting and submerging into Monet's pond at Giverny. The work is believed to be a commentary on the negative impacts of capitalism and consumerism within society. Show Me the Monet exists within Banksy’s Crude Oil series. The work was sold in October 2020 by Sotheby’s. The work was sold for £7.5 million.