Brad Downey - I forget what I wanted to say

APOCALYPTIC COLORS and DIE AUSSTELLUNGSSTRASSE invite you to the private view of Brad Downey

Sydney Ogidan: Hi Brad, thanks for still doing this interview, ist already after midnight.

Can you tell us who you are, where you are from and a little about your background.

Brad Downey: My name is Brad Downey. I was born in Louisville Kentucky into a military family which moved every few years. my father is a pilot. I moved to New York when I was 17, from 1997 to 2003 i lived there, studied film and animation at pratt. In 2003 I moved to London and started to study painting under Bruce Mclean. I worked collaboratively with VERBS aka Darius Jones from 1998 to 2005, DARIUS AND DOWNEY. Before New York skateboarding was very important,

Sydney Ogidan: Did skateboarding get you into art?

Brad Downey: Most likely, but I was painting, alot, oil

Sydney Ogidan: Before you skated?

Brad Downey: Yes

Sydney Ogidan: So art got you into skateboarding?

Brad Downey: I never had any access to anything art related outside of a local library. Picasso, Miro all the big book names. Skateboarding was my conduit into contemporary culture, besides TV, also while skateboarding I was always outside, It also taught me to question my surroundings. a bench is no longer a bench

Sydney Ogidan: When you are skateboarding you reinvent the urban space. Iremember you said several times, „written word, architecture and pipelines are the 3 things i hate the most".

Brad Downey: Its an obstical for self expression, everything has the possibilty to be somthing else. thats important for my work now, shifting meaning as I said many times, I see pipes as a kind of original sin, it is the main thing which gives people the freedom to seperate themselves from nature. you can pull water from its source as far as you want I think written word in a historical context is manipulative, Just like architecture manipulates the space in which you are allowed to move I think the state is a collaboration of architecture and written word, or vise versa

Sydney Ogidan: One of your projects for this exhibition involves security cameras, can you tell us a little about it.

Brad Downey: Firstly I was thinking about subtracting things from the city. I think there is so much stuff in the urban space that I started to feel that instead of always adding things maybe I could take somthings away. I wondered if it would be possible to contribute something by substracting. I dont really know how I came to the cameras. It was just something I always noticed I always wished someone would take them away additionally It made extra angry when they were fake, it is like a control magic trick, they are simultaneously showing you something which should scare while hiding the fact that there is actually nothing happening, maybe it just means they have less money. I guess they would really like to have real cameras, but its kind of like a god watching you who doesnt really exist but I also like the holes that the screws leave in the wall once the camera is removed Its like the cacer has been removed and the holes funtion like scars

Sydney Ogidan: Most of the pieces where produced during your prior visit here, do they have a specific viennese energy?

Brad Downey: I would say the magnent work has a viennese energy. In Vienna everything is bolted down. You get the feeling that your not supposed to touch anything you should just walk through and feel how beautiful the surface of the place is, its not a city that allows the people to use in a direct sense. So I was walking and walking looking for thing that I could change and move or shift and I could not really find so much, but I kept coming back to this point ( Michaelerplatz ) where there was this big new architecture placed directly in front this roman site.

For me Rome is the begining of globalization, all roads should lead to Rome, pipes etc, anyways this placement of iconinc architecture or the placement of the opened roman site felt like a iconic, kind of expression of being more grand. It was like showing what Vienna learned from Rome and look how more grand they are now but inside of this roman site you can find EURO money. I like that I imagined all these people coming to this grand viennese architecture and throwing there united states of europe money into ancient rome. and traditionally these peices of money also function as wishes than I thought what are they wishing for, probably more money.

But it felt like a weak point on the surface of this untouchabale place, like a insecure moment, its like maybe they hate Rome so they want to show that there better by building the same idea but more beautiful, they wish to be better

Sydney Ogidan: Recently you showed with Yoko Ono, Roman Signer, Erwin Wurm just to name a few and will be in a show now with Warhol, Basquiat, Jenny Holzer, sounds like your work is expensive already?

Brad Downey: Well, it can be expensive but if nobody buys it doesnt matter. No its going good. I just did a show in Folkwang is Essen is really great, big big museum.

Sydney Ogidan: Thanks for beeing so patient my last question refers to the most famous artist in streetart today and his unknown personality. I know lots of people who would love to you to tell us Banksys real name.

Brad Downey: Brad Downey