• I am a multimedia artist working mainly in the mediums of sculpture and video. In a climate where identity politics have become ontologized to the point of nearly being stripped from reality, I make work dealing with our collective and individual material identity and spirituality, and its connection to American capitalism. I pull intuitively from the worlds of advertising, cinema, and social media to produce works that explore base human urges and the universal thrust to define ourselves through narrative. The American market place, through our endless connection to our cyber-identities created through parasocial relationships with holy celebrity figures, strives to not only predict our tendencies, likes and dislikes, but guide them, as to better sell to us. I have created sculptural and video works exploring what it means to have a greater entity guiding your own self identity. I explore voyeurism, gratification, human nature, and the indifference of reality at large. I employ references that span from Hitchcock to World Star Hip Hop to analyze our existence where the most valuable capitalist resource has become data. My work mimics American culture by decontextualizing images and sounds and reconstructing them to make new meanings and by leveling the media hierarchy. In this way, the president is side by side with YouTube stars, and the extreme or the profound is side by side with the banal. Consumo-citizens live in an Algocracy ruled by the algorithm. In this manner, a darker side of a once celebrated individualism is revealed. The same reason Trump was elected is the same reason the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken over the popular zeitgeist: American fantasy has become American reality.

  • Braden Skelton is from Atlanta Georgia. He received his BA from the University of Georgia in Philosophy and Film Studies, and his MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

  • EDUCATION
    2020 BA Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Georgia, Cum Laude

    2023 MFA Sculpture, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

    AWARDS
    2022-2023 New Artist Society Award
    2022 Olive Clin Meskimen Scholarship 2022 Howard and Donna Stone Scholarship

    SOLO EXHIBITIONS
    2023/2024 GENRE FICTION Weatherproof, Chicago, IL
    2018 STOLEN OBJECT SERIES, Lamar Dodd School of Art, Athens, GA

    GROUP EXHIBITIONS
    2024 Fever Dream, The Plan, Chicago IL
    2023 10 Desirous Adjustments, Switch-Hook Projects, Chicago IL
    2023 Graduate Exhibition 2 (thesis), SAIC Washington Gallery, Chicago IL
    2022 Sproftacchel Park, Comfort Station, Chicago, IL
    2022 The Patriot, O’Flaherty’s, New York, NY
    2018 EXTRA!, Lamar Dodd School of Art, Athens, GA
    2018 The Golden Record: Far Beyond Our Galaxy, curated by Brooke Leeton, Rebecca Brantley, Jon Vogt, and Paula Runyon, Athica Contemporary Art Gallery, Athens, GA
    2018 43rd Juried Exhibion, curated by Wassan Al-Khudairi, Lyndon House Art Center, Athens, GA
    2017 UGA Undergraduate Curated Exhibition, curated by Candice Greathouse of Mint Gallery, Atlanta, GA

    PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

    2019-2024 K-12 Substitute Teacher2020 Commissioned piece by Buck's Sports Barn, Buckhead, GA

    2021-2023 Teacher’s Assistant, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

    Visual Critical Studies- 4090, Building as Form Sculpture- 2008, Mold Making and Casting Sculpture- 3115, Foundry: Industry Morphologies, Contemporary Practices 1011 - Studio Practice

    3D Object Lab technician, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

    2024 Adjunct Faculty, The University of Georgia

    Visual Thinking ARTS 2100e, Transmedia ARTS 3800

    COLLECTIONS
    2023 In the collection of Nick Cave

  • email : skeltonbraden@gmail.com

    instagram : @skelton1000kg