ARTIST BIO
Brian Andrew Whiteley is an internationally recognized visual artist with a decidedly humanist approach. His work spans performance art, video art, installation art as well as painting and drawing. A wonderfully charged blend of mysticism, criticism, humor and emotion. Many times the work spills outside of the gallery walls and into the public sphere. Always challenging and confronting viewers.
He is known for having had Justin Bieber sue him for impersonating him and getting collectors to offer him $100,000 for his sons kindergarten art. His political work the "Trump Tombstone" brought upon a Secret Service investigation and he is not allowed near politicians. He was thrown out of Trump’s DC hotel for hanging a Vladimir Putin painting in the Presidential Suite (it hung for a month). He was outed for being the performer behind several urban Bigfoot sightings - eventually ending the project after being shot at in character in Upstate NY. He has snuck his work into the Museum of Modern Art and Brooklyn Museum. He has gotten the Real House Wives of NY to pay him to feed a clown icecream. He has been beaten bloody and peed on in character in his “Golden Showers” performance. Most notoriously, he started the “creepy clown pandemic” by haunting cemeteries across the United States and Europe. His painting practice has brought his work to galleries across the United States and Europe with features in many publications on fine 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; 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; Bushwick Open Studios, 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, many others.
He received his masters from the School of Visual Arts and his bachelors at Ball State University.