brandon andrew

1982, San Diego, CA
Lives and works in Los Angeles

Through symbolic representations of celebration, play, and rituals punctuating the passing of time, Brandon Andrew comments on the precariousness of the human experience by constructing exuberant moments of the absurd.

With careful consideration of the relationship between material and environment, Andrew creates impermanent structures, ephemeral gestures and participatory interventions.

Whether the work's inevitable demise is due to natural causes, bureaucratic engagement, or impossible architecture, focus remains on the means to the ends.

He intends to complicate traditional views by mourning life and celebrating death.

…Or maybe it's the other way around.

View CV here.

big one hundreds

  • 11.11.11

    Inspired by Samuel Beckett's End Game, Big One Hundreds seduces the audience into a game of tetherball. Exposing the failures of relational aesthetics, there is no way of entering into the piece; upon engaging the game, the multitude of balls quickly form an intractable tangle.

text message breakup

  • 11.09.11

    LA series of paper sculptures in which a large piece of paper is folded into the shape of a note that one passes in middle school and high school. Each blank note is run through a press multiple times and then unfolded.

sweet chariot

  • 10.22.11

    At sunset a swing, hanging 146 feet from the Colorado Street "Suicide" Bridge in Pasadena, invited the public to swing over the pathway and passersby. The precarious intervention lasted for twenty minutes, meeting its end when the local police arrived and dismantled the piece.

keep ya head up

  • 09.04.11

    Keep Ya Head Up is a neon sculpture that distorts the classic shape of a balloon to exhibit a state of deflation. The slumped balloon, hanging precariously on the edge of a shelf, suggests both the hope for and disappointment of celebration. In memory of my cousin Trevor.

hold me

  • 07.14.11

    On a downtown Los Angeles sidewalk, approximately two thousand relighting birthday candles stood together, spelling out “Hold Me.” Once lit, the individual flames gradually merged to an intense single torch, reaching heights of four feet. The growing heat pushed the audience back, until the fire was extinguished per the demands of an officer.

together forever

  • 04.29.11

    A male betta (fighting) fish swims in an inverted water-filled glass bowl on top of a mirror. The water operates as a vacuum, creating an airtight seal around the lip of the bowl. The safety of the fish is dependent upon the hold of the water seal, while the same seal simultaneously limits the amount of oxygen available to the fish.

venn diagram

  • 03.09.11 - 03.15.11

    Along the Sunset Strip, blue and red theater lighting gels were installed over spotlights that illuminated a blank billboard. The intervention remained up for a week before officials removed the gels.

it's for the best

  • 01.17.11 - 01.18.11

    One hundred helium-filled balloons were anchored by strings to the wall of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgium (MUHKA). As guests arrived, gallery attendants tied balloons to their wrists. Throughout the night, a performer circulated the room, cutting the strings of the balloons from the museum-goers' wrists, sending the balloons to the ceiling. The balloons formed a drawing on the ceiling until days later when they descended to the floor.

parties over

  • 12.10.10 - 12.28.10

    Roughly 200 helium-filled balloons suspend fifteen multi-layered party curtains from the ground, creating a fully enclosed mobile circular party room. The free-floating, lightweight structure allows the audience to be fully consumed by the fragile celebratory environment. Over the course of the show the piece fell to the floor making it impossible to enter.

hope it all works out

  • 12.10.10 - 12.19.10

    Three primary-colored helium-filled balloons are layered between pieces of transparent plastic. Throughout the course of the show the strength of the helium dissipated. As the balloons collapsed, the blue balloon escaped, floating to the ceiling where it popped upon contact. Red and yellow remained beneath the plastic until the sculpture was completely flattened.

carnie wilson

  • 09.18.10 - 10.04.10

    Helium-filled carnival balloons initially push against the ceiling. Each balloon is tied with a string of varying length taped to a point on the ceiling. As the helium grows weaker, the balloons fall into the shape of a two tiered chandelier. The tape securing the balloons in position eventually loses it's stick over time, dropping the balloons to the floor, allowing time, temperature, and material to dictate the disintegration of the piece.

don't go jason waterfalls

  • 05.27.10 - 06.15.10

    Seven fish bowls containing betta fish hang precariously from plastic netting tied to ropes slung over a pedestal and loosely tied to a hook in a nearby wall. The ropes therefore obstruct the walkway between the pedestal and wall.

conceptual art is such a drag

10.17.09

An homage to Magritte.

Click To Play

diana's beast

08.20.09

Disco lights expose a subject's movement, operating somewhere between violent thrashing and ecstatic celebration.

Click To Play

ballast

  • 06.19.09

    A glass cube on a pedestal in the center of a gallery contains a single living fly. Mic’d walls of the cube pick up the sounds of the fly as it bangs against the glass and transmit the sound to four speaker placed along the gallery walls, in correspondence with the walls of the glass cube. When the fly hits the north wall of the the glass cube it is heard and felt at the north wall of the gallery.

hug

  • 03.09.07-03.11.09

    Hug is a series of fabric tarps loosely attached to chain link fences along busy walkways. The wind picks up the soft fabric to envelop passersby.

h.g.

  • 10.05.08 - 10.06.08, 12.21.08

    Three eight foot in diameter helium-filled weather balloons carry a work light fifty feet into the air. The structure is counterbalanced by an extension cord that descends from the light to a bundle on the floor. As the helium loses energy, the object descends to the ground.

walk this way

  • 02.27.08 - 03.05.08

    A form of sculptural trompe l'oeil, Walk This Way appears to be an aged cobblestone path extending out of a receding river bank. The path continues down the bank and into a stream. Instead of sinking to the floor of the riverbed the stones float in formation on the surface of the water. In collaboration with Marley Tomic-Beard.

puddles

  • 09.16.07 - present

    Puddles is an ongoing intervention installed after spring rainstorms. A random ten block area is chosen where the puddles in that area are then "colored" with the use of milk and food coloring. By midday the puddles dry up and the work is gone.

delilah shaw ½

  • 01.19.09 - 02.20.09

    Ten high-powered lights installed within a gallery wall are visible only through a hole chipped into the wall and presented as an accident.

playtime

  • 02.21.08

    Fluorescent light fixtures hang as swings from a tree branch in a park overnight.

bely's spiral

08.24.07 - 09.04.07

Five televisions arranged in a row face a wall, playing five different looped DVDs. Each DVD consists of film clips that are edited to a different prime number of frames. Although each video is under two minutes long, the looping videos create a constantly changing and evolving sound/light piece. In the instance that the piece could go on playing ad infinitum, the piece would only repeat after 3 million years.

Click To Play

contact

Feel free to contact me

brandonandrew@gmail.com