Brandon Herman is an American-born conceptual artist who works in photography, painting, sculpture, video, and performance. His creative process involves diligently staged events, often preceded by months of research on a topic of interest, and then scripted and executed with a cast of chosen performers. In 2007 he orchestrated a yearlong project inspired by the high profile abductions of Polly Klaas (in the 90's) and Patricia Hearst (in the 70's). The pieces that showed in the resulting exhibitions explore the psychological intricacies of the experience of being kidnapped, but often only hint at the elaborate and experiential method by which they were created. Role-playing, false identities, fame, media sensations, privacy, solitude, and American suburban life are recurring subject matter in Herman's work, which ranges in aesthetic references from Renaissance painting to paparazzi photography, as if to point out that our image-saturated eyes have downloaded a comprehensive new visual language. Allusions to high production mass media are combined with more base, lo-fi imagery, often reminiscent of YouTube and other self-produced internet content, creating a sort of netherworld between the gloss of consumer culture and the grit of human desire.
Herman graduated with a BFA in Photography and Film from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2006. His work has been shown internationally, including in a recent project with Musac Contemporary Art Museum in Leon, Spain, and featured in such publications as Anthem, Artforum, Dazed & Confused, Eyemazing, Flaunt, Nylon, Soma, Tokion, V, and Vice. He lives and works in Los Angeles.
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