David Henry Brown Jr

David Henry Nobody Jr. is an Interventionist/immersionist performance artist, sculptor and painter who works in diverse mediums, often placing his physical body into the work. Frequently riffing off of the dark side of American popular culture, he has been showing his work since the early 1990’s both in the New York art world and as a renegade underground figure and as a collaborator. During his many different artistic periods, his work often involves the creation of characters that perform and make objects. His work first became notorious when he impersonated New York socialite Alex Vonfurstenberg crashing VIP parties for one whole year in 2000. Sixty photos document “Alex” meeting the Clintons, Puff Daddy and other luminaries. The project was shown as his first solo show at Roebling Hall gallery In new York and created an international news scandal in the Media, appearing in The New York Observer, The Globe and on ABC’s 20/20 with John Stossil, to name a few. His work has been collected in prominent private art collections.

The theme of the DIY Fantastic Nobody, the ‘loser’ that acts like they are famous but who is not, drives David’s work deeper inside the images and social masks of an image obsessed and ever more simulated culture. Nobody's work frequently mixes art and life in a very personal way, to take on and live experientially through complex subjects, such as the dark side of American dystopian consumerism. Often he creates his own brand of existential “man of a 1000 faces” shapeshifting "Fantastic Nobody" characters that perform and 'hack' reality or make sculptures and paintings. He often describes his work as behavioral art in which he becomes a problematic illusion or physically wears the dilemmas of society.

Nobody predicted the Trump presidency (unfortunately) in his 1999 Stalking Donald Trump performances, where he followed Trump for a year and even made Trump For President 2000 campaign posters and campaigned on his behalf, as a prescient social experiment. He appears with his diy Trump 2000 sign in The Rage Against The Machine Sleep Now Forever in The Fire music video from January of 2000, directed by Michael Moore

David has gone on to continued to break new and experimental ground in his Red Carpet Rollers project (collaboration with British artist Dominic McGill), Shopping Mall Portrait Series, Wax Museum Host project, post 9/11 Fashion series, Drawing series, Polaroid series, Pizza Infinity series, Banksy Impersonation series as well as an assortment of ongoing studio works/objects. 

David is a founding member of the Fantastic Nobodies, a renegade/outsider/performance art collective, which was a collaboration of six artists, 2003-2013. The Nobodies have shown internationally in Berlin and in New York most notably with Andrew Edlin Gallery and at WhiteBox. 

Follow David’s newest work, and most sensational/disturbing body of self-portraits on instagram @davidhenrynobodyjr (currently carries a 158K+ following) This recent work, characterized by a large body of “Resemblage” self-portraits, inspired by and immersed in the digital masks we wear on the internet, has gained significant attention on social media and in the press.

This large body work of work has garnered enormous press in the last years and has been featured on the BBC, VICE, The Huffington Post and HiFructose to name a few. The ongoing body of work was featured in a large scale Solo live performance/installation at MOCA Tucson in September 2018 and as solo gallery as well as group exhibitions.

David transitioned his work to the NFT tokenization community in 2021 and embraced the concept of art on the blockchain/ decentralization. He has produced a steady culture and market for his tokenized videos and photography.

In yet another thematic twist David has more recently returned to his perennial subject of painting- producing dark and otherworldly black velvet paintings and performances as PaintoMime, the absurdist painter, culminating (so far) in a solo show at Satellite Gallery in NYC in May of 2026.