Brad Troemel

Brad Troemel (born 1987)[1] is an American artist and writer based in New York City. Troemel is most well known for co-creating the Tumblr blog The Jogging in 2009 which received attention for its work in post internet art.[2][3]

Brad Troemel
Troemel in 2014
Born1987 (age 35–36)
NationalityAmerican
Websitebradtroemel.com

A self-described “emphatic disruptor”,[4] The New Yorker has described his work as “a jab at the rigid rules of the art world and an experiment in what art might look like if those rules didn’t exist.”[5]

Education

Troemel received a BA in Visual Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. For his thesis, he wrote a twenty-page essay titled "Free Art" which used arguments by Wired editor Chris Anderson to envision a radical techno-libertarian conception of how the Internet can circumvent the traditional art world.[5] He received an MFA from New York University NYU Steinhardt.[6][7]

Career

In 2008, Troemel opened the Chicago-based art gallery Scott Projects.[8]

Starting in 2009, Troemel, along with artist Lauren Christiansen, began digitally compositing images that depicted irreverent installation scenes and sculptures on the Tumblr blog The Jogging.[9] Jogging concluded with months of polarizing conspiracy images made by Troemel and the artist Edward Shenk, what critic Zachary Kaplan called "a body of image macros that took on the look and feel of Truther and right-wing, anti-Obama propaganda while simultaneously subverting it through absurdist content."[10]

In 2011 Troemel began a series of exhibitions with his use of Bitcoin and the Silk Road black market. For the exhibition "The Social Life of Things" in Rotterdam, Troemel used a number of objects from the marketplace including a fake ID containing his real details and picture, bump keys and psychedelic drug seeds which were presented in an installation. Those objects were presented for free to be further used by visitors and Troemel himself used Silk Road-purchased identification to travel from New York to Rotterdam for the exhibition.[11]

In 2012, Troemel launched an Etsy store primarily featuring temporary food sculptures designed to fall apart during their shipment through the postal service.[12]

His early work was exhibited at the Tomorrow Gallery, run by Tara Downs.[13]

Troemel's 2014 exhibition Live/Work at Tomorrow Gallery featured a series of hanging colored ant tanks, each representing a different trio of charities.[14] The run of the exhibition served as a competition between the various ant tanks to see which could most productively dig the most tunnels, earning the charity that the ants represented 10% of the exhibitions' proceeds.[15]

In 2015 Troemel partnered with Joshua Citarella, a former collaborator from Jogging, to create UV Production House, an Etsy store providing material kits and fabrication guidance to collectors for all-original works.[16][17][18] In 2016 exhibition "Freecaching", Troemel concealed his entire studio inventory in Central Park and presented GPS coordinates as magnetic puzzle certificates of authenticity at Tomorrow Gallery.[19] He described, the exhibition was meant to be a proof of concept for discretely utilizing public space as a sharing economy art storage business model.[20]

In early 2020, Troemel released a mock "advertisement" for the Joe Biden campaign captioned, "His brain? No, his heart." The satirical piece went viral and was shared by both left-and right-wing users who were not always aware of its original intent. The piece was later taken down by Twitter and other platforms as fake news.[21][22]

See also

References
  1. Rebecca Smeyne (July 2012). ""Artist Brad Troemel on his unusual online store..." (interview)". Paper Mag. Retrieved 2013-05-13.
  2. Durbin, Andrew. "We Don't Need a Dislike Function: Post-Internet, Social Media, and Net Optimism". Mousse Magazine and Publishing. Archived from the original on 2015-03-18. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  3. "30 Tumblrs to Follow in 2013". Time Tech. 2013-10-07. Archived from the original on 2013-11-11. Retrieved 2013-11-11.
  4. "Brad Troemel". Artspace. Retrieved 2023-07-30.
  5. Chen, Adrian (30 January 2017). "The Troll of Internet Art". The New Yorker. Retrieved 22 May 2020.
  6. Clara, Janina (June 7, 2010). "Liberal Arts and Visual and Critical Studies Undergraduate Symposium". Fnewsmagazine.com. Retrieved 2012-02-19.
  7. "2012 MFA Thesis Exhibitions". NYU. Archived from the original on 19 October 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2013.
  8. "about". Scottprojects.com. 2008-10-10. Archived from the original on 2012-04-02. Retrieved 2012-02-19.
  9. "Immaterial Incoherence: Art Collective JOGGING". Rhizome.org. Retrieved 2012-02-19.
  10. "The all-American art of the conspiracy theory". 9 July 2014. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  11. "The Silk Road". Rhizome. 2013-10-04. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  12. "Owner of Internet's weirdest store also give Internet's weirdest interviews". Daily Dot. 11 October 2012. Retrieved 2013-11-18.
  13. Miller, M.H. (September 5, 2014). "Goodbye to Yesterday: Toronto's Tomorrow Gallery Opens in New York". Artnews. Retrieved 11 March 2021.
  14. "Brad Troemel - Live/Work Tomorrow Gallery". Dis Magazine. 2014-10-17. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  15. "Brad Troemel's exhibition "LIVE/WORK" 2014". Art in America. 2015-01-15. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  16. "Freeportism as Style and Ideology?". e-flux. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  17. "PODCAST #1 Josh Citarella, UV Production House". Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  18. "Charlotte Cotton and Ultra Violet Production House in Conversation - Aperture Foundation NY". Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  19. "Hunting for Brad Troemel's Hidden Artworks in Central Park". Artsy. November 9, 2016. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  20. "16 New York Gallery Shows Where You'll Find Exciting Young Artists This October". Artsy. 30 September 2016. Retrieved 2016-11-14.
  21. Greenberger, Alex (27 April 2020). "Artist Brad Troemel Claims Responsibility for Creating Viral Fake Joe Biden Ad". ARTnews.
  22. Breland, Ali (29 April 2020). "Confused by this anti–Joe Biden meme? The creator says you just don't get the joke". Mother Jones.
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