10 Oct 2023/18 min/David Henry Nobody Jr
MLow X David Henry Nobody Jr
A studio walkthrough with the performance artist who traces generative art back to Fluxus, crashed the 90s as Alex von Furstenberg, and learned contemporary art by installing it.
This episode runs as a studio tour: MLow points at objects (What is that?) and thirty years of work answer back. It opens with Deep Fried Objects, a 1994 piece of deep fried consumerist bridal imagery, double D bras, silk flowers, fake butterflies, baby shoes, once installed by the pool table at Max Fish, the raucous Lower East Side bar of young artists and hard drugs. He frames it as a deliberate turn toward kitsch and Barbie pink against the macho art of his generation, shaped by his collaborator Dominic, an immigrant who taught him that celebrities are constructs, essentially American propaganda, and by Damien Hirst's early 90s medicine cabinets.
The education story is the spine. He skipped grad school, watching friends carry 100,000 dollars of Yale debt and still get no shows, and instead worked as an art installer from 1993 on: inside Gagosian and Metro Pictures, in collectors' homes, freelancing for Claes Oldenburg, even installing at a creepy Manhattan townhouse the crew was told belonged to a financial advisor and later learned was Jeffrey Epstein's. Self taught from the ground up, he built his own dogma, was out to mess things up, and links that threat directly to never being picked for a Whitney Biennial. His collective, the Fantastic Nobodies, exploded in 2013, pushing him onto Instagram as a solo act.
The heart of the episode is chance. His circle criticized art that was too self conscious, too much intent and control taking the soul out, so he engineered frameworks for accident: Red Carpet Rollers turned bystanders into unwitting performers, and for a year he crashed hundreds of VIP events posing as Alex von Furstenberg, handing a cheap 35 millimeter point and shoot to strangers so the flawed amateur frames became the work, an edition of 60 that includes his arm around President Clinton. He ties it all to Fluxus, art as a framework for life to flow into, and delivers the line the whole archive circles: I feel like that's what generative art is.
What this episode teaches
- Generative art is Fluxus with better tooling
His definition of the 60s movement, set up parameters and whatever happens in that framework becomes the work, is offered as a direct description of generative art. The thread runs from Dada through conceptual and performance art and merges with the technology; the ideas come from somewhere.
- Install art instead of buying an MFA
He declined the 100,000 dollar grad school path after watching indebted Yale friends get no shows, and educated himself working as an art installer from 1993 on, inside Gagosian, Metro Pictures, collectors' homes, and Claes Oldenburg's orbit. Direct exposure to real collections, paid instead of paying.
- Engineer the loss of control
Handing a cheap point and shoot to strangers guaranteed lunging fans and blurred mistakes in every frame, and those mistakes are the content. Too much intent and control, his circle believed, takes the soul out of a work, so he built chance operations into the process itself.
- Constraints convert into mediums
His huge experimental sculptures had no storage, no sales, and no gallery, so he photographed them and threw them away. That loss conditioned him to understand the camera was the real medium, which led directly to performances made for the lens.
- Wear the dilemma
After 9/11 he made a fashion line of business attire with crushed ties sewn on and shaved a jet plane into his hair, not as disrespect but as examination. When clubgoers asked where to buy it, his answer was the thesis: why would you want to buy what you are afraid of? I wear it to reconcile it.
- Keep a live index of your own motifs
Broccoli trees from Nano Mice in 1995, food coverings, crash imagery: perennial subjects resurface across three decades because he consciously reaches back into older bodies of work. He predicts a curator combing the archive will find the recurrences before he explains them.
- Fandom is trained emotion
Meeting career VIP crashers taught him that celebrity worship is manufactured: you are shown an image over and over, fall in love with it, and project family onto it. As Americans, he says, we are specially trained, and his celebrity performances weaponize that training.
- Disruption has an institutional price
He understands Warhol and Duchamp but marches to his own drum, and the work reads as a threat to the art world. The cost is explicit: no Whitney Biennial has ever called, and he connects the silence directly to the work's wildness.
The conversation, topic by topic
Deep Fried Objects, 1994
The tour opens with a piece made 29 years earlier: deep fried consumerist breeding imagery, bras, silk flowers, fake butterflies, baby shoes, installed near the pool table at Max Fish, a dirty, raucous Lower East Side bar full of young artists and, he recalls, a lot of drugs. It marked his turn into kitsch and Barbie doll pink, a deliberately feminine answer to the macho artwork of his male peers.
Dominic and Damien Hirst
His collaborator Dominic, an immigrant who loved kitsch and celebrities, gave him brutal criticism and the insight that celebrities are constructs, American propaganda he had lived among without understanding. MLow spots Damien Hirst in the piece and the artist agrees: Hirst's early 90s medicine cabinets were in the art magazines he was studying.
The installer education
Working as an art installer from 1993 on, he saw huge collections from the inside: Gagosian, Metro Pictures, collectors' homes, freelance work for Claes Oldenburg. One Crozier job took him into the biggest townhouse in Manhattan, a very creepy place whose absent owner the crew was told was a financial advisor; it was Jeffrey Epstein's.
Skipping the MFA
Friends spent around 100,000 dollars at Yale, carried student debt forever, and still never got shows. He got as educated as he could at the University of New Hampshire, then learned contemporary art from the ground up in New York, self taught but, he insists, very knowledgeable, and free to question everything.
The Fantastic Nobodies
His long running collective was so creative and so scrappy that success proved impossible; it exploded in 2013, and a year later he joined Instagram to try making it on his own. The pieces in the room include Black Hole Self, bought as a one of one by the collector Sashuku from the Nobody Pegs collection, and the cast iron bathtub he plumbed in himself during the pandemic, his fortress of solitude in a frantic city.
The post 9/11 fashion line
Business attire with crushed ties sewn to it, because the world had unraveled; he wore it to clubs and was baffled when people asked to buy it. The same body of work produced the jet plane shaved into his head, an examination of New York's paranoia and insanity, made, he stresses, with no disrespect to those who perished.
Red Carpet Rollers
He rolled out red carpets so bystanders would unconsciously become performers, caught in candid moments. The project introduced him to career superfans, one photographed with radio DJ Casey Kasem, who had been crashing VIP events since the 70s: mega cool loserdom, and proof of how completely capitalist propaganda can motivate a life.
Fluxus and generative art
Explaining why chance matters, he reaches for art history: Fluxus in the 60s said art is a framework for life to flow into the work, you set parameters and whatever happens becomes the piece. Then the line MLow's whole archive orbits: I feel like that's what generative art is, one thread from Dada and performance art merging with the technology, down to the phone recording the interview itself.
The von Furstenberg year
After months of failing to meet celebrities in a 20 dollar vintage suit, a voice told him to give the door guy a name from his Blair Academy boarding school days: Alex von Furstenberg. The door opened instantly, champagne appeared, and Barry White was backstage. By day he was Dave the hipster into drum and bass; by night he combed the Post and Daily News gossip pages and snuck into hundreds of events in a year.
Meeting the Clintons
The performance peaked when he slipped through Secret Service at Hillary Clinton's benefit birthday party and posed with President Clinton, arm brazenly around him, fingers near his neck, a mustached agent glaring behind. Afterward he felt followed and surveilled, maybe truly: the edition of 60 amateur flash photos stands as the iconic record.
Lost sculptures and the camera
The large scale experimental installations were too big to keep and impossible to sell, so he threw them out and kept photographs. The loss taught him the camera was the medium that mattered, and later works like von Furstenberg play directly to the lens.
Nano Mice and the broccoli
In 1995 he lay naked under 100 white mice in a staging of Gulliver's Travels, inside a miniature landscape whose trees were broccoli, feeding a lifelong love of dioramas that began with childhood model railroads and violent toy war scenes. That is why broccoli keeps appearing in new work: he constantly pulls from older bodies.
Perennial subjects
Answering MLow's standard Easter eggs question, he says a curator who someday combs through everything will find the recurrences: the Instagram food coverings descend from these 90s pieces, the crash element from 1995, food preserved under heavy varnish spray. He was nailing iconic moments before the technology existed to open them up; now, middle aged, he is really letting it rip, because he tried so many things first.
In their words
“I wanted to liberate myself from what art was, and question everything. I was out to fuck shit up. I still am.”
David Henry Nobody Jr“Why would you want to buy what you're afraid of? I'm wearing it because I'm afraid of it.”
David Henry Nobody Jr“Art is a framework for life to flow into the work. Whatever happens in that framework becomes the work. I feel like that's what generative art is.”
David Henry Nobody Jr“I handed the camera to strangers. Chance operations, there it is.”
David Henry Nobody Jr“Now as a middle-aged guy I'm really letting it rip, but it's because I tried so many things.”
David Henry Nobody JrCite this conversation
David Henry Nobody Jr in conversation with MLow, "MLow X David Henry Nobody Jr," The MLow Show, 10 Oct 2023. https://show.mlow.xyz/e/2023-10-10-mlow-x-david-henry-nobody-jr.html. Quoted from a machine transcript.
Quotations come from machine transcripts. Check wording against the audio before republishing.