Adam Himebauch is glitching again. Right now, he’s a pixelated silhouette in a shadowy room, voice shaky from an unstable internet connection, as he talks about digital identity, perception, and blurred realities. And in many ways, it’s fitting for an artist best known for his enigmatic online personas, satirical projects, and viral performances, many of which leave his online following wondering, “Who the fuck did I just follow?”
A winking storyteller fascinated by self-presentation and its reception, much of Himebauch’s work hinges upon “making light of people who take themselves way too seriously.” The 42-year-old artist, after all, is interested in influencers, the institutional art world, and other gatekeepers of culture that “use social media to manipulate and pursue the perception of how they come across,” while acknowledging that he’s also a part of a system. Because in a world of disinformation and online self-mythologizing, reality is the “manipulation and pursuit of perception and how you come across,” and it’s still surprising to see how often the masses still fall for the bit.
Over the years, Himebauch has taken on many identities, some fictional and others not-so-much. He was the actual founding partner of Dimes Square staples Forget Me Not and Kiki’s; the pun-happy street artist Hanksy; and, more recently, a lauded German artist named Adam Himebauch working from the late ‘70s onwards, with a fake GoFundMe documentary, a Taschen book, and exhibition at the non-existent NYC MoCA. Now, he’s himself, a multidisciplinary artist creating paintings, making Jerry Saltz deep fakes, and putting together projects like his “30-day meditation,” an online broadcast that turned out to be a looped video. Yet despite being open about these past projects not being real (and not making any effort to hide it), people still constantly congratulate him on his month-long meditation and his grand retrospective — with complete sincerity.
As part of a larger experiment, the artist wants to revive his “Adam Himebauch” project for VEXT, starting with the digital premiere of director Casilda García López’s Create Whatever You Want, which originally premiered at the New People Cinema Club’s “anti-clout film festival” in 2022.
Filled with fake “found footage” of Himebauch around downtown NYC, Create What You Want pairs staged shots “from between 1975 and the mid-‘80s” with references to familiar art and cultural products, such as Sean R. Ferguson’s Velvet Underground-inspired soundtrack. Meant to help you subconsciously make connections to the New York of Warhol, No Wave, and affordable downtown lofts, Create What You Want is ultimately an “institutional critique, [as well as an inquiry into] ageism, and the habitual nature of media consumption,” per García López. And as something that leaves viewers questioning what’s real or not, it creates a moment of confusion in an “IRL uncanny valley type way,” as Himebauch laughs, right as the screen freezes again.
