Brad Troemel

Brad Troemel (born 1987) is an American artist, writer and instructor based in New York.

Education
Troemel received a BA in Visual Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an MFA from New York University. His writing tends to focus on the decentralization of art’s hierarchies and describing ways that high art can learn from pop culture.

Career
In 2008, with curator Karly Wildenhaus, Troemel launched the website On The Make.

In 2008, he opened the Chicago-based art gallery Scott Projects. Starting in 2009, Troemel, along with artist Lauren Christiansen, made photoshopped images that depicted irreverent installation scenes and sculptures on the Tumblr website titled ‘Jogging’.

In 2010, his work evolved into the production of participatory systems and art events on the internet, such as the project Ready or Not It’s 2010, a call to arms wherein hundreds of artists staged an impromptu online exhibition on the Facebook wall of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Another example of this type of work includes the 2010 Meme Generator project, The Internet Artist, which featured hundreds of posts from anonymous members of the internet art community vengefully making fun of each other through the site’s LOLcat-inspired format.

In 2011, with Jon Vingiano, Troemel launched the user-generated website Blind Mist, which went on to win a 2011 Rhizome Commission. Troemel has written about and displayed his work in a number of emerging galleries that focus on internet-related art, including Richmond’s Reference Art Gallery, Philadelphia’s Extra Extra Gallery, Berlin’s Future Gallery, Chicago’s Golden Age, and Houston’s The Joanna.

He is a regular writer at Dis Magazine and has had writing featured on 491, YA5, and Art Fag City.

He has been an instructor and MFA student at NYU Steinhardt since 2010. Troemel has been featured in a number of lectures and panel discussions at such places as the Queens Museum of Art, Concordia University, and Bard CCS.