Vinyl toy fiend and diehard KAWS fanatic JEFF TOVERS went all the way and made his love eternal. Two more colorways to go, bro, send us photos when you wrap those up…

“MICHEL GONDRY‘S newest music video for Mia Doi Todd’s ‘Open Your Heart’. After several years conceptualizing a video involving dozens of dancers wearing bright multi-colored outfits, Michel found a perfect fit with Mia’s tune. The music was produced and arranged by long-time friend and collaborator, Jon Brion and the video features the Riverside Community College Marching Band.”

The Midwest leg of ST buddy SHEPARD FAIREY’s epic “Supply and Demand” retrospective opens this Friday at Cincinnati’s CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER (CAC), but in the meantime, our boy is out on the streets of Cin City doing what he does best (and we don’t mean getting arrested)…

Shep’s new CAC exhibition print available this Friday only at the opening…

What has to be the final nail in the “Street Art” coffin was driven in last weekend by none other than MR. BRAINWASH (aka: “The Christian Audigier of Street Art”) when he opened his massive, self-produced “Icons” show in a rented space (which, ironically, was once a real art gallery, pre-recession) in the heart of Chelsea. As the subject of Brit Street Art king Banksy’s recent docu-parody film, “Exit Through The Gift Shop,” MBW has been the focus of much hype and speculation as his presence finally seeps into the fairly muddy stream of mainstream consciousness. Last week’s Wall Street Journal article articulated this particularly well:

“Fueling the buzz around Mr. Brainwash is that no one knows exactly who the 44-year-old is. Some Web sites have speculated that he may be an invented character, part of a performance-art hoax. Others think he may, in fact, be the popular British street artist Banksy, whose face has never been shown on camera … “Maybe I am Banksy,” says the enigmatic artist, who says his real name is Thierry Guetta and speaks in a thick French accent. “Maybe not.”

Of course, the most amusing part of all this dumbfounded hypothesizing is how real—and accessible—Mr. Brainwash actually is. Far from actually being Banksy or any other legitimately mysterious street art phantom, MBW is simply Thierry Guetta, aka “French Terry,” a Los Angeles-based French transplant who cut his teeth in recent years by following around the architects of the scene, Shepard Fairey and Banksy, camera in hand, capturing film of them in action for what was to be his own documentary on street art. In the process, Guetta was inspired to follow in the footsteps of his idols and ultimately passed through the looking glass, assuming the incredibly ridiculous moniker of “Mr. Brainwash.” Guetta then forged a visual identity for himself by mining literally every Pop Art gimmick of the past 50 years and running it through the stylistic filter of Fairey and Banksy to achieve his own heavily derivative results. Of course, this would all be an act of genius (or at least considerable humor) if French Terry was doing it as a grand act of parody, skewering the scene he had been so closely observing for all its inherent gimmickry and blasé appropriation. In the process of his conversion, however, French Terry, like the computers in so many Sci-Fi tales, became self-aware, and convinced that he himself was in fact a true artist and the bona-fide “next big thing” of street art. Enter Banksy…

Convinced that Terry—due to his own directorial ineptitude or self-possessed drive to become a street artist himself—would never finish the original film as planned and recognizing the inherent absurdity of the would-be filmmaker’s hilarious conversion, Banksy did what he does best and flipped the tables by taking possession of Guetta’s reels and creating a new documentary with his own team. Focused not on himself or Shepard Fairey as originally intended, “Exit Through The Gift Shop” would instead chronicle French Terry’s amazing transformation as a metaphor for the absurdity of the street art world and Banksy’s own brilliant “take a sucker for all they’re worth” ethos. The result was billed by Banksy as “The world’s first street art disaster movie,” with the film’s trailer showing footage of Terry spilling paint in his truck and walking into signposts while quotes like “in a world with no rules, one man broke them all,” flashed across the screen. You could almost hear the sound of journalists scratching their heads at screenings in Park City (Sundance) and Berlin.

Dateline, February 12, 2010: Following up his self-produced June 2008 one man show in LA (that was itself a direct copy of Banksy’s epic solo show there two years earlier) that was held in a cavernous old abandoned TV studio facilitated by his family’s extensive real estate holdings and chronicled in depth here on Supertouch, French Terry unveils the East Coast installment of his street art apocalypse with the opening of “Icons” at a massive rented defunct gallery space in Chelsea. Featuring an equally absurd array of Warhol-derived celebrity portraiture (using silkscreen and splatter paint along with broken 45 records as his prime medium), mixed with Claes Oldenburg-style object sculpture, and exact replicas of Banksy-style found old master hotel room paintings featuring modern ironic interventionist touches (ie: P-Diddy raising the roof in a Renoir style oil painting) with prices ranging up to the—hold your breath—$300,000 mark, the show was pure MBW through and through. And while serious art collectors scoffed, knowing that the only reason French Terry was going rogue to such extent in NYC (aside from the obvious financial gains of having no gallery to cut in on the take) was because no serious art gallery would touch him, new money suckers and socialites were lining up to fork over the green to invest in the street art equivalent of Bear Stearns. Of course, MBW loyalists would cite his sold out show of work at SoHo’s Opera Gallery late last year as evidence of a real art career, but Opera is simply a tourist art gallery dabbling heavily in so-called “lowbrow” and “street art” of late (with a heavily funded/deluded client base, no less).

So what’s the take away here? Do we love French Terry for what he is? Deride him for who he thinks he is? Embrace him for bringing laughter to our hearts and lips? In the end, we at Supertouch are left to mine our own previous coverage of MBW’s Los Angeles show to deliver an apt closing moral:

“To call last nite’s opening of newly minted and ridiculously named “artist” MR BRAINWASH an “art show” would be a disservice to artists everywhere and even Mr Brainwash himself. Instead, let’s call it what it really is: a grand art prank of epic proportions. A heist. A spoof. A joke. Or maybe just the biggest, funnest, sloppiest high school art fair of all time … In the words of one of LA’s most pioneering street art provocateurs, Skullphone, “if Disneyland wanted to open a street art ride, this is what they’d have done.”

Our prediction for French Terry’s next big project? Our money’s fully on the Mr. Brainwash clothing line by Christian Audigier. It’s just too bad Michael Jackson’s not around to see it (or this show), he would have eaten it up…

HAVE A LOOK:

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Unsurprisingly, our man BANKSY didn’t show up:

“An apparent press conference by “Exit Through the Gift Shop” director, and mysterious street artist, Banksy was canceled in Berlin today. A subject of the film, which debuted last month at the Sundance Film Festival, Banksy remains an incognito artist. He issued a video statement that was shown prior to the press screening of his movie on Sunday at the Berlinale, in lieu of a press conference.

He started by saying, in a recorded message, “Unfortunately I can’t be with you today, so I am speaking from my home in England via satellite link.”

“I guess my ambition was to make a film that would do for graffiti art what ‘Karate Kid’ did for martial arts, a film that would get every school kid in the world picking up a spray can and having a go,” said a silhouetted figure, identified as Banksy, in a digitally altered voice on the short video message. He added, “As it turns out, I think we might have made a film that does for street art what ‘Jaws’ did for water sking.” Click HERE to continue reading at INDIE WIRE…

Has it really come to this?:

“Troubled music company EMI Group PLC is talking to potential buyers for Abbey Road Studios, the hallowed London facility where the Beatles did most of their recording, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The talks are the latest sign of distress at the world’s No. 4 music business, which has floundered since being acquired in a 2007 leveraged buyout by private-equity firm Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd.

Terra Firma is attempting to avoid default on a £950 million ($1.49 billion) loan backed by EMI Music, the company’s struggling recorded-music business. It needs to raise more than £100 million from Terra Firma’s investors to keep from defaulting on the Citigroup loan.

A sale of Abbey Road—which EMI hopes is worth tens of millions of pounds—wouldn’t have any impact on that effort, a person familiar with the matter said. The transaction is too small to make a difference, and in any case wouldn’t likely be completed in time to boost Terra Firma’s latest fund-raising effort.” Click HERE to continue reading at the WALL STREET JOURNAL…

Meanwhile, PAUL McCARTNEY told the BBC: “There are a few people who have been associated with the studio for a long time who were talking about mounting some bid to save it. I sympathize with them. I hope they can do something, it’d be great.”

French artist CELESTE BOURSIER-MOUGENOT has taken “rock art” to new levels in London with her installation for the BARBICAN ART GALLERY’s new “Curve” series by enclosing live electric guitars in a room inhabited by a flock of birds. The results sound a lot like a Sonic Youth album:

“Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates works by drawing on the rhythms of daily life to produce sound in unexpected ways. Boursier-Mougenot’s installation for The Curve, his first solo exhibition in the UK, takes the form of a walk-though aviary for a flock of zebra finches, furnished with electric guitars and other musical instruments. As the birds go about their routine activities, perching on or feeding from the various pieces of equipment, they create a random and captivating soundscape.

Also included in the installation is a series of videos that feature close ups of hands playing electric guitars. However, the sounds that accompany the footage do not emanate from the guitars. Instead we hear an insect-like drone produced by the amplification of the video signal.

French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot creates works by drawing on the rhythms of daily life to produce sound in unexpected ways. Boursier-Mougenot’s installation for The Curve, his first solo exhibition in the UK, takes the form of a walk-though aviary for a flock of zebra finches, furnished with electric guitars and other musical instruments. As the birds go about their routine activities, perching on or feeding from the various pieces of equipment, they create a random and captivating soundscape.

Also included in the installation is a series of videos that feature close ups of hands playing electric guitars. However, the sounds that accompany the footage do not emanate from the guitars. Instead we hear an insect-like drone produced by the amplification of the video signal.”

Supertouch buddy KAWS has just dropped a quick sneek peek of the installation of his eponymous new show of three large paintings in Madrid, Spain, at the esteemed GALERIA JAVIER LOPEZ opening February 17th (to coincide with the kickoff of ARCO Madrid). This show comes as a brief preview for what’s to come at the artist’s upcoming first ever museum show at THE ALDRICH MUSEUM opening June 2th. Meanwhile, here’s what the gallery has to say about the Jersey boy:

“The three monochromatic paintings in this exhibition mark the newest works on canvas by the artist, each using gloss line on a matte background. The two black works, “Nightime Office” and “Through the Door”, reuse the artist’s signature Kawsbob and Chum characters. Inserting them into claustrophobic compositions, these figures violently break through architectonic frameworks into the space of the viewer, pulling shattered material with them.

The largest work in the show, “Dead Wrong”, builds upon the rectilinear sections of the other works, yet combines both characters. Here, space becomes disjointed, conveying a stronger sense of collaged imagery. The fragmentation suggests a recombining and reconfiguration of separate paintings into an overall visual assault. A diminutive set of Kawsbob’s hands seem to pull the fabric of the canvas itself to cover his eyes from something imminent. The graphic Chum looms ominously in the background, rendered flat yet threatening.

By augmenting imagery whose origins are innocuous, Kaws subverts popular culture and presents a vision of panic and anxiety. Incorporating his signature “X”ed out eyes, the figures become premonitions of their own deaths, merging childlike imagery with abstract concept. High art strategies and popular icons become interchangeable. KAWS’ paintings at once recognize the way that popular images inseminate our lives and suggest the collapse of visual culture.”