The artwork “Balloon Girl” 2024 by Mr. Brainwash (Thierry Guetta – 미스터브레인워시) is based on a work by his mentor with whom he also made his documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop. Girl with Balloon (also Balloon Girl or Girl and Balloon) is a London series of stencil paintings by graffiti artist Banksy begun in 2002. It depicts a young girl with her hand outstretched pointing at a red heart-shaped balloon being carried away by the wind. The first work was on Waterloo Bridge, and there were other murals around London, but none of them have survived. Banksy has used variations of this design several times to support social campaigns: in 2005 about the West Bank barrier, in 2014 about the Syrian refugee crisis, and also about the 2017 UK election. In a 2017 Samsung poll, Girl with Balloon was ranked as the most popular artwork in the UK. From Mr. Brainwash, the motif comes in a variety of sizes.
Paint sketches and stencils imprinted between layers of colour differ from paper to paper, making each paper by the artist a unique work of art. The subject of the work is the little girl in the dress who became famous in Banksy’s “Balloon Girl” artwork. The little girl regretfully looks at her red balloon flying away, conveying a feeling of sadness, that we can fully perceive even though her face is not painted in detail.

Both Banksy’s “Balloon Girl” and Mr. Brainwash’s “Balloon Girl” have the same meaning: childhood gloomily runs away while time flows undaunted. In 2018, a framed copy of the artwork was spontaneously shredded during an auction using a mechanical device hidden in the frame. The artist certified that he was responsible for the shredding during the sale and gave the altered work a new name: Love is in the Bin. Sotheby’s said it was “the first work in history ever created during a live auction.” Mr. Brainwash repeatedly references artworks by his mentor and interprets them in his own way. In doing so, the original white background in Mr. Brainwash’s work is typically colorful with collages, silkscreens, stencils and comic books. The cheerful and carefree is thus even more clarified true to the motto of Mr. Brainwash: “Life is Beautiful” or “Follow Your Dreams”. Of course, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat or Andy Warhol’s symbols are not missing in the background.

International Shooting Star | Mr. Brainwash

Hardly any other street artist has experienced a comparably rapid rise as the Frenchman Thierry Guetta aka Mr. Brainwash, born in 1966 in Garges-lès-Gonesse. His path to becoming the most successful artist of recent years is closely linked to the name Banksy and his Oscar-winning film Exit Through the Gift Shop: In this documentary, Banksy encourages Guetta, who was still unknown at the time, to become active as an artist himself under the pseudonym Mr. Brainwash. The film about Mr. Brainwash and Banksy, which won numerous awards, resulted in sold-out Mr. Brainwash shows and exhibitions worldwide. In winter 2023 / 2024 FRANK FLUEGEL GALERIE shows new works by Mr. Brainwash in Kitzbuehel / Austria like every year.

The Banksy painting “Game Changer” was sold at a new record price at a Christie’s auction in London on March 23, 2021 for a hammer price of 14.4 million pounds ($26 million). With fees, it came to a final price of 16.758 million pounds ($30 million), a world auction record for Banksy, according to Christie’s. Street Art is on the rise.

On Thursday, October 14, 2021, the Banksy Balloon Girl was sold again at Sotheby’s in London in auction during FRIEZE Week under the new title “Love is in the Bin.” On the exciting evening, Sotheby’s returned with a record-breaking Contemporary Art Evening Sale at the New Bond Street Auction with attendance. The centerpiece was the dramatic sale of Banksy’s infamous work “Love is in the Bin,” which broke all records with a hammer price of £18,582,000. And so the work, half-destroyed by Banksy, was now sold by its owner, entirely in accordance with the rules of speculation, for 16 million pounds plus a premium, a mere three years after the last purchase. The million from 2018 was well invested. This example shows perfectly that the art market is no longer about art, but about investment, value and prices.