you are numbered
you are product
you are doomed

PROXY Gallery 2009-2012
(an online zencart storefront)
http://bradbrace.net/proxy.html

Enlarged (custom, patented algorithms) and enhanced photographs (now, likely
several hundred thousands, soon over a million), mostly low-res cellphone,
web-cam, and low-end digital camera self-portraits (self-packaging), culled from
dating/social websites.

arkansas, asia-other, bangladesh, korea, lebanon, singapore, sri lanka, vietnam,
australia, british columbia, arizona, brazil, caribbean, europe-other, florida,
france, hawaii, idaho, illinois, india, italy, japan, louisiana, maine,
mexico-latin-am, morroco, netherlands, new york, oceania, ontario, oregon,
phillipines, quebec, rhode island, russia, south africa, argentina, chile,
columbia, venezuela...

download the backstory at:

http://bbrace.net/proxy.pdf
http://bradbrace.net/proxy.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/author/bradbrace


  you are numbered
 you are product
you are doomed

PROXY Gallery 2009-2012
(an online zencart storefront)
http://bbrace.net/proxy.html
http://bradbrace.net/proxy.html

now showing: Profile Portraits (we the people...) build your own exhibition
+ catalogue with commissioned encaustic profile paintings on 12x12" panels,
any subject!

Perhaps this reemergence of the individual is vital. Perhaps this is how we
react as living beings, as mortals, to the threat of an omnipotent universe, the
threat of a definitive unreality. so this whole array of technology could be
taken to mean that we have again come to believe in our own existence.

PROXY GALLERY (now showing: we the people): select and assemble your own custom
art exhibition with catalogue based on commissioned portrait-paintings! Ultra
hi-res art files, suitable for printing, are delivered in one custom
pdf/ebook/directory. thousands of enlarged (custom, patented algorithms) and
enhanced photographs (now, likely several hundred thousands, soon over a
million,) mostly low-res cellphone, web-cam, and low-end digital camera
self-portraits (self-packaging), culled from dating/social websites -- as you
might expect, there is some explicit content (more than is permitted here
unfortunately: you really should see them all, but it probably makes little
difference) -- fascinating and occasionally disturbing. I've decided to also add
a set of painting-filters -- this was good, as it enabled a 'recovery' of many
more worthwhile images, and also clouded any possible erogenous/irregular
corporate claims, but the project now extends beyond my life-span. I easily make
small paintings from these images and people support that activity: commissioned
portrait paintings, 12" square encaustic on panels, from your choice of subject
-- selected pairs/couples can be intriguing --for $15,000US. it's interesting to
find the balance/inertia point between the look of photo and painting, and it
speaks to the current social/heroic condition! often the image-processing makes
faces look squinty so it's necessary to 'bring-back' facial aspects. the display
images on the PROXY Gallery storefront are but quick approximations of the
larger art files which simply don't scale -- kinda like painted panels. another
advantage of the painting filters is that they drastically reduce the file sizes
and make it well-nigh impossible for someone to covertly res-up these display
images for printing. it's quite incredible to realize that many of these
pictures were only 3-4K or so when I started to work on them. you may realize
that this is not the first time I've collected anonymous found-public imagery:
notably dumpster-diving (bicycling with backpack at midnight,) at
photofinishers' in the 70's. and of course, there's the "Insatiable Abstraction
Engine" -- collections from newsgroups.
[http://bbrace.net/insatiable-abstraction.html] but come to think it, nearly all
my work involves repeated multiples or collections of imagery. my new friends.
whenever possible I retained any color casts, cropping and lighting. the
self-portraits are actually very considered, sometimes selections made/altered
merely to obscure the identity that they wished to presumably portray initially.
sunglasses are a popular ruse, as are close-ups of cleavage, butts, tattoos,
feet and groins. (curiously, I've yet to see a picture of hands... ok, now I
have:  some intricate fingernails and the love/hate finger-tats.) many
feature-obilerating camera-flash-portraits in the bathroom mirror. many of
course, occur in and around motorized vehicles. only one (so far) in a grocery
store. and some, but surprisingly few, are filched from somewhere online, but
this must be a risky choice in the event of an 'actual encounter.' how much
introductory information/description do you want to put out there to begin with?
there are some very creative, even artful, solutions to this dilemma. various
select national groups of portraits are also included in pdf ebook/directories
for $250 (this is refunded with the order of one or more paintings; sorry about
the price but it was a hellish amount of work and I guarantee you won't be
disappointed or YMB), and can be ordered directly. these images contain
sufficient resolution to print them out on letter-size/A4 paper (or coffee-mugs,
keychains, magnets, photo-stamps, cards, calendars, tea-towels...) use my
verified Paypal account to have the pdf delivered at no charge:
[bbraceATeskimo.com;  http://bradbrace.net/buy-into.html] also available through
Scribd and Lulu. you can curate/assemble your own catalogue/exhibition at the
PROXY Gallery storefront.  art files along with encaustic painted panels are
$15,000US each.  my new friends. having been recently kicked-off Facebook (there
was an anonymous report of a depicted nipple!), and losing 5,000 appreciative
friends - the online storefront was the perfect place to host a social-media
profile-portrait-collection...  how hypocritical to object to profile pictures
that may have been on FB to begin with; but it's fun to now position coloured
boxes and bars over nīpples, cīnts and cīcks. how idiotic is that? the files of
course required different custom algorithms and some masterful retouching --
they look great! technically given the incredibly diverse range of imagery it
was difficult to make them all equally legible; despite a variety of intricate
processing directives, the scripts would inevitably crash or be unable to render
a decent image. these were handled individually as were the painting-filters.
sure to be a collectors' (socio-anthropologists') item! an amazing and
compelling, collective portrait! the interspersed military/gangster imagery (or
maybe something else), also introduces a new spin on the hopes for this already
tenuous social-media culture. I've had to organize/sub-divide these in some
fashion, so by state/country seems to be the prevailing approach. California had
to be the place to begin. and given how often workers are compelled to move
around, there's more of a local difference in cultural self-perception, body
language, and social-sexual proclivity than you might expect. it really is a
perhaps overlooked (overly-present), socially significant era when a massive
proportion of the population is able to individually exorcise their self-imagery
instead of being routinely dependent on existing systematized systems of
portraiture and presentation -- which is not to say that it's entirely free from
stylistic-cultural-corporate constraints and codification (and why, for now at
least, I left the imagery in a nearly random arrangement within each
national/state sub-division), but the individual, probably for the first time
ever, is seen freely negotiating a shifting porous skein of varied reception...
well, something like that... but how could it possibly matter in this bigger
world of shuffled lies. the future of humanities: buy-now -- it's an obviously
exclusive, pointedly calculated, dismal, tired and insular discussion that
somehow sadly shuffles "the deadly futures" of increasingly indebted/desperate
privileged artworld acolytes who are compelled to repay by recycling received
collegial/corporate diatribes...  not unlike treacherously asking interrelated
corrupt institutions such as illegitimate States whether they have any future:
who will continue to profit and at what repercussive-peril for the populace (?)
-- and what can it now mean to cling to the bandied, hollowed refrain of "we the
people..."


PROXY Gallery 2009-2012
(an online zencart storefront)
http://bbrace.net/proxy.html
http://bradbrace.net/proxy.html



/:b