b. 1978 Berkley, California

Brendan Fowler is a Conceptual artist who works with collage, text, and performance through the project BARR, which slyly deconstructs the rock band format by featuring Fowler, alone, talking rapid-fire over a drumbeat. His multidisciplinary approach allows for a confusion of genres: For example, he makes text art about music by lifting passages from BARR performances and, reciprocally, makes music about text art (“And not to mention at all the legacy of text art which is clearly implicit,” he intones over the languid beat of the titular song of BARR’s 2006 album Summary). Recently, Fowler has further merged art and music in his poster pieces that address the controversial names of various contemporary bands, particularly the Canadian noise rock quartet AIDS Wolf and the Memphis-based garage punk musician Jay Reatard.