Cuadro

In “We Are Beginning”, Brad Downey introduces interference street art to the region, playfully manipulating mundane objects on the street, such as signs, bricks and construction materials and transforming them into meaningful playful messages.

Downey illustrates how city dwellers have become acclimatized to signs to such an extent that their subtle manipulation can often go undetected. The artist aims to surprise the viewer by illuminating how public and private property, urban space and personal experience frequently overlap in an era of increasing privatization. He injects new life into mundane objects, then re-introduces them into the everyday landscape. Brad’s works are a temporary disruption, sometimes remaining in place for as short a time as a few minutes.

Brad Downey was born in Kentucky, USA in 1980. He is a 2005 graduate of the Master of Fine Arts in Painting program at London’s Slade School of Art and a 2003 Bachelor of Fine Arts in Film graduate from New York’s Pratt Institute. He was a resident artist at the Oxylane Foundation in Berlin in 2011 and the Museum Quartier 21 in Vienna in 2010. Downey was both a resident artist and a recipient of a project production grant at the Goethe Institute in Amsterdam in 2008, the SEEDA Arts Plus in 2007, and the Anita Shapolsky Foundation in 2006. Downey currently lives and works in Berlin.