BIO
Brian Andrew Whiteley is an internationally recognized visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, video, and immersive installation. His work is frequently shown at galleries and institutions and often times infiltrates the public arena, weaponizing civic space, media ecosystems, and institutional architecture as primary mediums.
Whiteley is widely known for orchestrating high-profile viral art interventions that bridge societal myth-making and political provocation. Notable projects include his international "cemetery clown" performances, which inadvertently helped spark a global viral “creepy clown pandemic”, and his high-stakes Bigfoot sightings, in which he submitted live-action performances as the legendary creature to cryptozoology “experts” before the series culminated abruptly in 2014 after he was shot at while wearing the costume. His political and institutional provocations further include the surreptitious placement of a 500-pound granite headstone inscribed for Donald Trump in Central Park's Sheep Meadow—triggering an intensive federal investigation by the Secret Service and the FBI—and his clandestine installation of a subversive Vladimir Putin oil portrait inside a luxury suite at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. Additionally, his elaborate conceptual hoaxes, such as embodying pop icon Justin Bieber to mount a satirical exhibition at the mock-Gagosian gallery "Gablowsian," have drawn international headlines and legal retaliation, transforming intellectual property law and state security apparatuses into collaborative components of his ongoing critique.
As an active voice in contemporary discourse, Whiteley is frequently invited to lecture and speak on his practice at esteemed institutions such as the School of Visual Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
His work has been shown at experimental venues and larger institutions, including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore; The Invisible Dog, NYC; The Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; Art Basel, Miami Beach; Spring / Break Art Show, NY; Zolla Lieberman Gallery, Chicago; Boston Center for the Arts, Boston; SXSW, Austin, TX; David Owsley Museum of Art, Indiana; Joshua Liner Gallery, NYC; Art on Paper Fair, New York; and Bakehouse Art Center, Miami. Residencies include: Mudhouse, Crete; Wassaic Project, Wassaic, NY; Freight and Volume Residency, Provincetown, MA; Sancto Sanctorum, New York, NY.
His projects have garnered worldwide press from The New York Times, The NY Daily News, Juxtapoz, Hyperallergic, Village Voice, Daily Mail UK, Gothamist, Brooklyn Magazine, Art Net, BBC, Time, Esquire, GQ, Fox, ABC, NBC and NY Magazine, among many others.
He received his masters from the School of Visual Arts and his bachelors at Ball State University.
His work is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Provincetown Fine Art Center, KAWS collection and numerous other private collections.