Brad Troemel

About

Brad Troemel is an artist, writer and content creator whose pieces focus on and react to both internet and meme culture. Troemel is known for making art projects that resemble misinformation and for incorporating themes, materials and processes from the internet into his in-real-life practice as an artist. His work often mocks or trolls aesthetics and styles of posting which exist online and is associated with the post-internet art movement.

Career

Troemel works most frequently with photography and with installation and sculpture art. He first became widely known for his Tumblr blog The Jogging, which started in 2009 as a way of photographing sculptures and enhancing them using Photoshop.^[2] The blog "produced thousands of strange images that blurred the distinction between art and meme," according to The New Yorker.^[1]

Funded by a grant from the digital art organization Rhizome, The Jogging grew to include over a dozen consistent collaborators across the New York art world and distributed images (example seen below) to a wide audience on Tumblr in the early 2010s.

In his 2014 piece, The Social Life of Things, Troemel arranged a number of objects that he bought off the Silk Road illegal dark web marketplace (including drugs, fake IDs and paraphernalia) in an artful display, which also included their packaging. To attend the unveiling of the show in the Netherlands, Troemel traveled using a forged ID purchased on Silk Road.^[4]

With his project UV Production House, carried out with frequent collaborator Joshua Citarella, Troemel created a series of "do-it-yourself" artworks. Fans would buy kits of parts and assemble sculptures conceived by Citarella and Troemel^[5] (examples of art pieces sold at the UV Production House seen below).

In the 2020s, Troemel started posting parody infographics on Instagram in which made fun of social media imagery used by the left, liberals and the right. Many of his posts attracted attention and also fooled some into thinking they were authentic. For example, "His Brain? No, His Heart," a fake Biden campaign advertisement circulated widely online, was originally created by Troemel in an April 2020 Instagram post (shown below).

Similarly satirical and misleading infographic content was produced by Troemel about a "Swiftie Union" in June 2023, during the controversy surrounding the contentious relationship between Taylor Swift and Matty Healy (seen below).

Following

Troemel has maintained an active posting presence on Instagram, with over 126,000 followers as of June 2023.^[7] Frequently, he reposts the memes of others, creates his own memes and infographics, as well as promotes video content on his Patreon.

On his Patreon, Troemel posts exclusive content and "reports" about different topics in meme culture, internet culture and the world in general.^[6]

Related Memes

His Brain? No. His Heart

His Brain? No. His Heart is a fake political advertisement for Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign that features a photo of him smiling with a beam of light emanating from his heart alongside the text, “His brain? No. His heart.” The ad mimics real examples from his campaign with the message, “Approved by Joe Biden. Paid for by Biden for president.” After the image was uploaded to Instagram and Twitter, users began reposting it and photoshopping different elements to the design. Twitter subsequently banned many of these reposts for “violating its rules.” The meme shares many similarities to the fake Team Joe ads.

External References