AGE: 30
BASED IN: New York
Brian Oakes’s exhibitions look like an extremely organized mad scientist’s lab. For their breakout show at Blade Study in New York in 2024, the artist created a miniature sorting machine like those used at waterfront distribution centers—but instead of shipping containers, Oakes’s machine sorted diorama-like tableaux in a mysterious rhythm. In their increasingly sophisticated work, which also includes circuit boards and precious stones made from common materials, Oakes asks probing questions about value, automation, and desire.
What project do you have coming up that you are especially excited about?
For the past several months I have been slowly developing a process for creating synthetic opals, rubies, and emeralds, and now I am working on sapphires. I also recently found a supplier for extremely small ferrite toroids that I am trying to weave together into a magnetic core memory module. A lot of the things I have been making in the past year-and-a-half deal with divination (prediction) as a systematized asset. Lately, I’ve been trying to think about memory in a similar way.
Describe your work in three words.
Automated labor systems.
Tell us about a teacher who changed the way you think about art.
Mel Di Giacomo was an incredible photographer and a mentor of mine in the town I grew up in in New Jersey. When I was in high school, I would go to his photo studio and talk with him for hours at a time about art and what it meant to be an artist. I have distinct memories of standing outside of church with Mel every Sunday, making sure everyone who needed a seat got a seat until mass would start. Then he and I would step outside and talk about art, I’d run inside for communion, and then come back out to continue our discussion until service ended.
Imagine someone gives you $150,000 to make anything you want—no strings. What are you making?
I would make an entire supply chain. Or a sorting facility and distribution port. Or a fully automated factory—maybe one that produces crystal oscillators for integrated circuits.
What art-world trend would you like to see die out?
Neon signs, interactive art, using tape to cover power cables.
Is there a studio rule you live by?
Messes are generative.
See CULTURED’s full 2025 Young Artists list and access other individual artist profiles here.
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