A Banksy Thought and Leaving a Little Magic for All...
A 3-Dot Guide to your mid-March art life...
I don’t want to spend a ton of time on this, because it seems like Reuters spent way too much time on it, but the “unmasking/unveiling” theory of Banksy is one of the most vapid, pointless, and dare I even say slightly malicious attempts to ruin one of the last fun things about the art world left. From the looks of social media, the only thing we are learning is that the aggregation machine dominates our culture in a way that is both dangerous and lazy. The story that Reuters put out almost just seems like “for the sake of it,” and its disappointing that in a day and age where we need some real unmasking of the horrors of power in this world, to spend this time trying to determine the identity of a beloved, important and happily anonymous art project in 2026 is truly a fucking waste of time. And, to be honest, to go to Ukraine, a war ravaged country, and show the locals photos of some people who could be an anonymous artist and see if you can test their facial reactions is gross and shows the depths of click-bait and desperation for “the story” to get aggregated and theories abound… A… fucking… waste… of… fucking… time…
But, alas! There are other things I won’t call a fucking waste of time today… first off, Issue 02 of The Unibrow (look at me click-baiting you with a Banksy headline to get ready for Issue 02… The Unibrow, they’re just like us!)… it’s exciting times for us, and we will unveil to you the contents of our production next week, but let’s just say it’s bigger and better… or more pages and better… of just as good? Look, its arts and culture and we aren’t trying to ruin anyone’s magic, okay?
London… you got a few good things on the scene right now… Timothy Lai is back at Josh Lilley with some dreamy, surreal paintings… Cathrin Hoffmann continues her incredible work in sculpture at Public Gallery… Tracey Emin, the legend, is at The Tate Modern, and you have a Flavin, Judd, McCracken, Ryman, Sandback show opening at Zwirner… you are also in London, I’m not worried about you…
(Molly Bounds)
Was really happy to see Molly Bounds will be opening a solo show at Mrs. in NYC next week… I’m not going to call Molly underrated, but she’s one to look into… if you know me, and you probably don’t, but maybe you are trying to get to know me… you know I love Lomex’s program and the Shogo Shimizu show looks wild as always… Harkawik is also a banger and they have Eli Hill coming up… Fredericks and Freiser open a group show Innocence and Intruders, curated by Andrew Freiser and Julia Willett, opening next week… and I’m really happy to see Eric White is back at the GRIMM space in Tribeca, one of my favorite rooms in all of NYC art… Nicholas Bono Kennedy is at Hashimoto Contemporary, too, which is always a good stop… Kurimanzutto can do no wrong to me, and Mariana Castillo Deball’s new show at the NYC space will be one of my first stops when I get into town next week… that’s right people, I will be in town. Make a date. Buy me lunch.
Los Angeles… I told you about Lauren Halsey, and so did every media outlet…. went to a wild Paul McCarthy show at The Journal Gallery that you could or could not bring your grandma to, depending on your grandma’s taste for sexual desire and stabbing yourself in the eye… Jonas painted tennis at Gagosian…
(Alfonso Gonzalez, Jr)
Also wanted to give a shoutout to the great people at OR Books and their Duchamp Takes New York release… they publish a plethora of meaningful, activist-centric and powerful books, one of the best in the business, and we appreciate all their help in our ventures at the moment…
Also wanted to give a shout to Alfonso Gonzalez, Jr and his new bus stop benches on display at LACMA in Los Angeles… such a great detail and touch to a museum that is really about to explode with attention when the new building opens this spring….
Text by Evan Pricco
Subscribe to The Unibrow’s print edition on our website, https://the-unibrow.com/subscribe