VLADIMIR PUTIN PAINTING AT TRUMP’S  DC HOTEL

Installed in the Presidential Suite on August 1st, 2018 - Remained in place for three weeks.

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Subsequent showings at Hashimoto Contemporary Gallery LES, Art Club Brooklyn and Art Hole Bodega.

On August 1st, Brian Andrew Whiteley placed his painting of Vladimir Putin in the Pennsylvania Avenue suite at Trump's DC Hotel. The room overlooked the Washington Monument and was steps away from the White House. Three weeks later, there was still no response from the Hotel. What had happened to the painting? Whiteley went back in early September to investigate. When he arrived again he told the Trump staff that he had "forgot something in the suite". They allowed him access to the suite and there it was...still hanging. The painting was up for an entire month! After jostling with the staff, security and the management, he was able to prove that the painting was his property. At that point Whiteley was forcibly removed from the property and thrown out of the hotel.
Projects like the Vladimir Putin Painting, the Trump Tombstone and Golden Showers: A Sex Hex (The recreation of the infamous Golden Showers/Russian Dossier) were designed to portray larger, more complex and abstract ideas festering in the public conscious about the Trump administration. Ideas that are generally known but are lacking the "proof". I hope that these projects pull back the curtain a bit and shed some light on the state of affairs in America. - Brian Andrew Whiteley