Brad Downey

Biography

Brad Downey is an American artist living and working in Berlin. His art challenges conventional notions of public space and the urban environment, inviting viewers to rethink their relationship to their surroundings. Downey often reworks everyday objects in unusual and sometimes humorous ways, expressing the subversive potential of everyday life. Downey aims to create a dialogue between the urban environment and its inhabitants. His work opens up new possibilities for thought and action and invites us to imagine alternative futures for ourselves and our world.

Brad Downey has exhibited widely in Europe, as well as in numerous international exhibitions, museums and biennials, such as the Timișoara Architecture Biennale in 2022, and the Tbilisi Architecture Biennale in 2020.  There have been several monographic exhibitions of Downeys work, including, I Am You, You Are Me at the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU) in Zagreb in 2023, and, Slow Motion Disasters at Kunstraum Kreuzberg Bethanien in Berlin in 2019, and, and Reverse Culture Shock at MU Hybrid Art House in Eindhoven in 2018. Further solo exhibitions include Flupp Blubb Boing at Kunstverein Arnsberg in 2020, and This Echo at the Galerija Vžigalica in Ljubljana in 2019. In 2020 Hatje Cantz published a 20 year survey of Downeys work entitled Slapstick Formalism Process, Project, Object.

Cosmic Rock Bottom

Inconsistency, failure, pollution, accounting, and digital detritus. This ensemble reuses found, personal, and discarded objects, including receipts, illegal advertising tape, and burned feathers. Accompanied by bronze sculptures of the artist’s hands, these works symbolize a cultural or creative rock bottom, reflecting on human error and technological mistakes and failures.