Brandon Barr received his BFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute, and his MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University. He has exhibited nationally and internationally including China and Brazil. Brandon participated in the Kala Art Institute residency program in Berkeley, CA, and exhibited at the Torrance Art Museum and Young Projects gallery in Los Angeles. His multi-media approach explores the intersection of digital content and material phenomena through video, sculpture, painting, augmented reality and interactive installation. He currently resides in Los Angeles, CA.

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The work from my Flash Painting series explores the hidden aspects of online interaction and presentation by highlighting the captions, memes, digital color pallets and devices we use. Fragments from various social media captions I have found online are painted onto digital canvas prints using reflective acrylic that can be viewed by photographing the work with a camera flash. Whether it is scrolling through Instagram or Twitter, the text often implies a personal opinion from that user, but the sections I have taken out can also be interpreted within a much broader context. Something that was once playful or fleeting now acts as a pause for reflection. Captions like “Conspicuously absent” or “am i enough, am i too much” combine two contrasting ideas and also refers to the way in which many of us interact on social media. We present ourselves to potentially millions of people while physically hiding behind the screens of our devices in solitude. The printed background is also a combination of a digital painting and found photos that have been blurred out.  

The work itself also needs to exist in two places. You have to use the camera flash from your phone to view the reflective text. Once this happens, the piece lives on as a physical painting and a flattened digital file, both needing each other in order to complete the artwork.