Contact: drbredar [at] gmail [dot] com
www.stars-gallery.com
Currency collaborator Leah Ke Yi Zheng’s website: keyi.onl
All of what follows is true. I was born in Denver, Colorado and grew up in Maryland. I’ve been drawing continuously since I was 3 years old, and my first “person drawing” was of my brother in red marker, diagonally composed on a sheet of computer paper, with fierce teeth and big shoes. I loved baseball as a kid. In the late summer of 1998, my mother passed away in a car accident that my brother and I survived. My father is a federal district judge, nominated by President Obama, and is currently the Chief Judge for the District of Maryland. My first-grade teacher became my step-mother and my sister Sophie is now 18 years old. My grandfather on my mother’s side had a lifelong career with the CIA, and worked in Jakarta, Tehran, and Russia. At the end of World War II before the CIA existed, he rescued General Wainwright, the highest-ranked American prisoner-of-war, in a mission dubbed “Operation Cardinal.” He was fluent in 14 languages at his peak and played the mandolin. After tame attempts at piano and trumpet, I invested my time in jazz guitar lessons with Joe DeCara. In high school, I was mainly interested in Chemistry, Biology, and Art, and was a pole vaulter for the track and field team (max. height 11.5’ with silver and bronze IAAM medals). At the end of sophomore year, our friend Lewin Powell murdered his mother with a baseball bat. He’s serving life in prison, and having done to himself what happened to me, I can’t imagine the regret he must feel. In 2010, I coordinated my school community in the collection and transshipment of 300 bicycles and 8,000 books to the disability rights activist Emmanuel Yeboah and his foundation in Koforidua, Ghana. Our project was featured on the verso of the front page of the Baltimore Sun, sharing paper with the USA Olympic hockey team’s loss in the final to Canada. A few of us travelled to Ghana (my first time out of the country, besides British Columbia) where we met the King of the Eastern Region and visited the Elmina Castle. I matriculated to Harvard University where I began 4 years of rooming with Bex Cole. I took Visual and Environmental Studies courses with Matt Saunders, Stephen Prina, John Stilgoe, Helen Mirra (sculpture), and Amie Siegel (16mm film); took art history courses with Benjamin Buchloh and Tom Conley (who translated Deleuze’s The Fold into English); and a graduate poetry workshop with Jorie Graham. I swindled my way into Wade Guyton and Amy Sillman after parties. A significant turning point in my life occurred when I was accepted by the Lampoon and joined the magazine’s staff. I assisted in several acts of debauchery with the likes of Tony Hawk, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan, Bryan Cranston, Whoopi Goldberg, Nas, the Boston Bruins, David Blaine, Tiny Fey and 30 Rock, Weezer, Neil Gaiman, Art Spiegelman, David Sedaris, Junot Diaz, William Friedkin, Leos Carax, Harmony Korine, Jesse Eisenberg, Jimmy Fallon, Lawrence O’Donnell, Bon Iver, Jamie XX, Diplo, Hannibal Burress, Tim and Eric, Mindy Kaling, B.J. Novak, and the Harlem Globetrotters. I pranked Jason Alexander (George Costanza on Seinfeld) in front of 300 people, but perhaps most notably, I sat on the Crimson Chair. In the Lampoon, I learned that the secret to a good prank is the story you’re going to tell in the future. Anyways, I got into some other business during my college days. I received the Sidney Williams Traveling Fellowship for the Visual Arts and ventured to Paris, France, living across the plaza from Le Bateau Lavoir, Picasso’s abode in Montmartre. I never went in there. I shifted between Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Udaipur, and Mumbai in India. In my time working in The New Yorker’s Cartoon Department, I saved the Great Book of Dogs from double-printing a Sam Gross cartoon. In my time working at the Brooklyn Museum, I saved 516 excess archive photos from being discarded — this set later became the core of my book Approaching Capture (2014). I rode on a RE/MAX hot air balloon, spent a day with Guillermo Trotti who designed the nodes of the International Space Station, and received a selfie from Rashida Jones. I became a member of the Signet Society in my last year at Harvard. After that, I worked as a studio assistant and then teaching assistant for the artist Matt Saunders. I mainly contributed labor to the multi-channel video work Poelzig/The Intricate Alps which was shown at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York. As a teaching assistant, I received three Distinction in Teaching awards from Harvard. For about a year and a half, I wrote an experimental manuscript, writing no less than 1000 words a day; this later became the core of my first novel Wenzel Beckenbauer. A local Poetry Club became a singular retreat to Utopia, Texas, and then pretty soon I was living in “Casablanca” with Tyler Richard and Andrei Ciupan. Together, we met John Ashbery in the hospital before he passed, and later that weekend met Zadie Smith in a Manhattan penthouse party. I started drinking with the VES faculty at their weekly Stammtisch, and also at Fran’s which was run by Katarina Burin. Nora Schultz arrived to teach in sculpture at this time, and Josef Strau made a memorable visit. When Matt had his show at Blum & Poe in Tokyo, my brother and I made a skiing trip to Hokkaido. I was kicked in the back by a Yakuza while leaving the ATOM club at 5am in Shibuya. My brother and I also summited Longs Peak in Colorado together, and Mt. Shasta in California in different summers. After briefly studying for the LSAT, I returned to painting after deciding I needed to go to graduate school. It really was like that. I should also say that I visited the Prado in Madrid to see the Velázquez paintings. After seven years in Boston, I drove a moving truck to Chicago by way of Niagara Falls to start my MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. There I took Gaylen Gerber’s class twice, and advised with Richard Rezac twice, and descended into the alchemical fire of ceramics. In my first year, I was invited to Gagosian Madison Ave. for a meeting with a dealer. I did a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in August 2018 and ran almost every day on the bike trail: perfect. As one of the Visiting Artist Coordinators for SAIC’s Painting and Drawing Department, I successfully invited Joe Bradley, Kerstin Brätsch, Daniel Hesidence, Jamian Juliano-Villani, and several other artists of stature. My first solo show, Lavender Vanitas, took place at Extase run by Budgie Birka-White. Then — carbon copy was formed, a collective of 7 artists (alphabetically: Brigette Borders, myself, Nathan Engel, Ed Oh, Daniel Salamanca, WooJin Shin, and Leah Zheng). Leah and I received the 2019-2021 Fellowship from the Arts Club of Chicago and also formed the collaborative artist duo Q&A, which then became the fictional gallery Currency. Michelle Grabner invited carbon copy to run a workshop at the Great Poor Farm Experiment XI in the summer of 2019 alongside Sky Hopinka’s exhibition. I made two paintings included in Adrian Wong’s booth at the Armory Show 2020 (just before the pandemic hit the U.S.) and had a solo project, Invisible to engines, in NADA Chicago Gallery Open. My work has been exhibited at Soccer Club Club, the Arts Club of Chicago, the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, the Elmhurst Art Museum, with Currency in Münster and Zurich, and has been pictured in the New York Times.