David Henry Nobody Jr's wonderfully bonkers self-portraits with masks made of food and consumerist detritus

David Henry Nobody Jr's Fake Smears and Facial Food Fiascos at the Big Apple's Contra Gallery will feature photography, video and performance.

Known for transforming himself into bizarre characters using masks and wearable sculptures comprised of food and consumerist detritus, the artist calls this practice "Resemblage", a term he coined to describe his unique conceptualisations, humorously and disturbingly exploring the dark side of American pop culture and politics. His pieces aim to question humanity, the modern day and aims to incite the imagination, exploring notions of "the self" in the narcissistic world around us.

With a sense of urgency, Nobody Jr creates and performs surreal, distorted self-portraits appropriated from memories of dreams, considering the resulting images "subconscious, animalistic rejection of our increasingly computerised and corporatised reality".

He finds inspiration in subjects such as Body Dysmorphia and its relationship to our obsession with the online world. Exploring surveillance, tracking and information-grabbing, Nobody Jr alludes to the current political zeitgeist and how these mediums affect our perception of reality. Fake Smears and Facial Food Fiascos uses comedy, the hideous, and the spiritual to map the complexities of the human soul.

Since the early 1990s, David Henry Nobody Jr has been showing in NYC and internationally, producing numerous creative “actions” and objects including the Human Weeble Wobble. He is notoriously known as the “bad boy artist” who impersonated Alex Von Furstenberg for a year, crashing countless VIP parties in NYC in 2000. The project became his first solo show and caused a national media scandal after he publicly exhibited photos documenting his interactions with President Clinton, Sarah Jessica Parker and even the real Alex.

Nobody Jr. predicted the Trump presidency in his 1999 Stalking Trump series in which he tried to meet Donald Trump as many times as possible in one year. He independently created “Trump for President 2000” signs, testing public reaction in a series of prescient street performances documented in video.

David is a founding member of the Fantastic Nobodies, a renegade/outsider/performance art collective, which was a collaboration of five artists from 2003 to 2013. The Nobodies have shown in Berlin and in New York, most notably with Andrew Edlin Gallery and at WhiteBox. Recently, the artist presented a solo show and performance series at MOCA Tucson. Find out more: www.davidhenrybrownjr.com.