This is the kind of presentation I miss since leaving New York last year; awesome artist with a taste for the theatrical, Banksy, has opened up a new pet shop near dear-to-my-heart bar The Jekyll & Hyde Pub.
The picture from the Village Voice’s slideshow caught my fancy extra snugly — framing an issue of industrially, genetically, and hormonally supped-up fowl within the icon of a Looney Tunes character. That’s reason enough for applause without the killer Hensonian attention to detail flushed into this sculpture. It’s part of a walk-in museum masquerading as a pet store. It’s surrealist, it’s a satirical appropriation of space, and the pictures are gorgeous.
I’m not a vegetarian; though on occassion I’ve been asked if I was — I try to balance things out. I’m more interested in ecology and animal treatment as responsibilities within the realm of sustainable living, which a lot of globally sprawled fastfood chain procedures laugh in the face of. I don’t want everything to be Kobe beef — I’m more concerned with where my money’s going, possibly employing people to commit un-health-conscious and repeated acts of unnecessary wrath against animals.
Like all good Banksy, the killer satire is what drives this concept home. It wreaks of something I love about Banksy’s other work, too, which is how the surreally silly can drag you into this Twilight Zone in the middle of broad daylight, almost disarm you completely with its dark humor, and use that disarmed state to open your eyes to a condition that was there all along in reality — reflected right back at you with an aesthetic dynamo. I wish I could see it firsthand. I’d also like to see what level of theatre the shopkeepers engage in. Anyone who sees it should let me know.