I know, I know; can you really steal art from somebody as dangerous and transgressive as Banksy? Two of his pieces, put together during his 2007 project on the West Bank, Bethlehem Santa’s Ghetto, have popped up in a show called Banksy: Original Street Works, at the Keszler Gallery. In the Hamptons.
The video above is a collaboration between Keszler and Bankrobber; it claims to detail how the guys went about harvesting the pieces in question – ‘Wet Dog,’ which had been on the side of a Gaza bus stop, and ‘Stop and Search,’ which had been put up on a butchery wall. They seem almost proud.
Neither of the two pieces have been certified by Pest Control, Banksy’s authentication office – although the firm does not authenticate works that have been removed from their original locations. So hey.
Keszler is selling the works for $450,000 and $425,000 respectively, in case the motives behind cutting this stuff out of its political context wasn’t clear.
[Source: NYMag]
