About Brian Kane

Brian Kane is an artist and Aesthetic Engineer based in Colorado.

His current practice, Suburban Surrealism, looks at everyday life in the post-ai world: the objects, interfaces, technologies, language, landscapes, and minor absurdities that have become so familiar we barely notice them anymore.

Kane approaches art as a form of good user experience. Four decades as an exhibiting artist, combined with more than three decades working as a pioneering UX professional, have deeply influenced the way he thinks about art, design, and the people who encounter them. Rather than treating the viewer as someone standing outside the work, he brings principles of human-centered design into the practice itself - making work meant to be encountered, understood, used, lived with, laughed at, or occasionally climbed under.

The results move freely between sculpture, installation, video, digital media, public art, products, clothing, and things that resist useful categorization. Internet language becomes physical sculpture. Familiar objects behave incorrectly. Technology is repurposed for experiences it was never designed to provide. Sometimes the work is functional. Sometimes that only makes things stranger.

Kane studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and later taught Industrial Design, Apparel, and Film/Video at RISD until 2019. He was a founding member of Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN), whose early work combined video sampling, music, television, technology, and media culture long before doing so became an ordinary part of everyday life.

His work has been presented internationally at institutions and events including Tate Britain, MACBA Barcelona, MASS MoCA, Museu Nacional da República in Brasília, and Nuit Blanche Toronto.

Across Brian's practice, the technology changes but the underlying interest remains  consistent: how designed experiences affect the way people feel, behave, communicate, and understand the world around them.

Suburban Surrealism continues that investigation in the present tense. It takes the visual language of contemporary daily life seriously enough to make art from it, but not so seriously that a fourteen-foot inflatable anvil is out of the question.

This shop includes original sculptures, limited editions, prints, Memewear, and other objects available directly from the artist.

Buy art. Feel better. Confuse your friends.