“The World of Banksy” Milan Train Station Turns Into An Art Gallery

While Banksy’s works set records at auctions, including a partially self-destructive painting, “Girl with Balloon,” which sold for $4.25 million, the exhibition that opens Friday aims to make his art accessible to everyone.

More than 130 murals and screen prints are on display until February 27 in the halls of this station, amid a decor that reproduces the world of the mysterious Bristol artist.

Manu de Ros added: “We reproduced the walls on which Banksy painted, the bricks, the concrete, the street dirt and pollution.” A group of young graffiti artists and students carried out the murals.

Among the exhibits are a number of Banksy’s most prominent and famous works, such as the painting “The Flower Thrower,” which represents a young man about to throw a bouquet of flowers in the shape of a Molotov cocktail, and stencil drawings representing his favorite animal, the rat, in addition to more recent works that have rarely been shown before.

These works include the mural “Achum!!” Which he executed at the beginning of the Corona pandemic in 2020, and depicts an old woman who sneezes to the point that she loses her dentures, and a painting from 2021 represents an escapee from Reading Prison in England escaping with a writing machine, in reference to the Irish writer Oscar Wilde, who was imprisoned in this prison in the 1990s. ten.

The exhibition encourages thousands of travelers, who are crowded daily in Milan station, to “stop and take some time to think” by immersing themselves in the mysterious world of Banksy, says Manu de Ross.

The curator of the exhibition added that Banksy’s works contain “messages for humanitarian purposes through provocation and sarcasm.”

In response to a question about whether Banksy authorized the holding of an exhibition of his works, De Ross said, “No, Banksy does not give the green light to exhibitions that he does not organize himself, but he does not prevent them at all.”

AFP