Brandon conducted research trips to cities in the Midwest to explore and learn from the culture of experimental, artist-run, or alternative spaces in the region, as well as radical creative collaboratives and other independent DIY initiatives along the Mississippi River and its tributaries, mapping an archipelago of art worlds in the middle of the United States.

Nominations are put forth by students, faculty, and staff of the college.

Brandon was awarded this funding for research and professional development by an undisclosed patron. Long weekend trip involved a loose-knit set of independent curators from North America, Europe, and Asia touring various sites and events in and around Venice, Italy.

Awarded number 27 with cover appearance by New City Chicago free arts and culture monthly.

Awarded number 45 by New City Chicago arts and culture monthly.

Named Best Artist in Chicago by alt-weekly mainstay, the Chicago Reader. Essay by Bert Stabler.

Inaugural Propellor Fund Grant (subsidized by Warhol Foundation) for programming at The Storefront project space.

Funding for research trip to New York to conduct studio visits and museum research for the exhibition "FAIR USE" at the Glass Curtain Gallery, Chicago.

ASDF is David Horvitz and Mylinh Trieu Nguyen.

Merit-based fellowship for graduate study in studio art.

Independent Curator with 20 years of diverse experience collaborating with artists and institutions of all sizes. Specializes in curating dynamic large group exhibitions as well as intimate alternative spaces. Known for providing valuable consult to artist-run initiatives, non-profit organizations, residencies, publishers, and socially engaged projects.

Working across the Art|Design department, including First Year Seminar, New Genres, Visual Cultures, and Professional Practices units. Member of CFAC Local 6602 and IFT-AFT/AFL-CIO.

Art Services Professional, providing end-to-end exhibition support—consulting, handling, transport, installation, and management. Work spans diverse settings, from warehouses to museums. Specializing in creative installations, prioritizing speed and efficiency. Committed to craftsmanship and smart resource management, fostering a stress-free, safe environment. Collaborative approach with student groups and volunteers. Notable installations include works by Francis Alys, John Baldessari, Paul Chan, Maya Lin, and more in various institutional venues.

Messy,Complex,Layered - Professional Practices seminar for BFA studio art students. A weekly seminar, it focusses on strengthening a student artist's social approach to both digital and in-person modes of personal and professional community-building through a research, writing, and self-publishing intensive. Intended to offer tools to adapt to the noisy and chaotic context of art and culture production.

Artist Mentor and Instructor for weeklong residency for Chicago area recent BFA recipients. Included studio visits, workshops, visiting artist lectures, and field trips.

Semester seminar leader and individual studio visits with MFA Studio Art candidates.

Josephinum is a private nonprofit High School serving students from Chicago's South and West Sides

Curatorial Lead for the MdW Assembly, a revival of 10-year dormant MdW Fair in Chicago, artist-run convening featuring projects across the central Midwest. Developed research and launch strategy and state partner recruitment, ran regular meetings on zoom and on visits to partner orgs. Consulted on development of digital platform and programming. Led and liaised with artists on physical installation of 70+ galleries and hundreds of artists on 2 floors of Mana Contemporary. Led monthly trips as project ambassador building bridges with like-minded local artist community stakeholders.

MdW project resumes in 2024 with a new Fellowship program, research Drifts to new states and regional partners, new Atlas multimedia content, and the MdW Summit, conversation forward gathering taking place Fall 2024.

Skills: Arts Organizations · Leadership · Team Leadership · Team Building · Contemporary Art · Curating · Visual Arts

Founded in 2008, Silver Galleon Press transforms books into tactile sculptures, leveraging content from the internet (public domain, open source, and pirated texts). Using cost-effective methods, titles are printed with a prosumer-grade Epson printer and a Samsung laser printer, bound by hand for a handmade aesthetic. Proficient in mobile operations for workshops, lectures, instant publishing, and pop-up sales.

Skills: Bookbinding - Prosumer-grade printing - Content curation - Economical production methods - Mobile operations for events and sales

The Storefront at 2606 N. California, 2010-2014 The Storefront was a multi-purpose non-commercial/non-non-profit institution-as-art project that operates according to the logic of a gift economy. Its mission was to support temporary and/or long-term projects by local cultural producers. Emphasis was given to process-oriented public participatory projects. Recipient of Propellor Fund Warhol Foundation regranting program.

BEN RUSSELL, an art space in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood, co-curated by Brandon Alvendia and Ben Russell, operated from 2009 onwards, featuring month-long 5-person shows. Themes were derived from the letters in "ben russell," adhering to strict constraints, with varied installations, time-based works, and live performances by Chicago and non-Chicago-based artists, available for viewings one night a month and by appointment.

ArtLedge, situated on a Chicago apartment's staircase at 1638 N. Western Ave, served as an experimental platform for projects tailored to its unique setting. Despite spatial constraints, it provided an unconventional exhibition space, inspiring artists to create site-specific installations during its 4-year tenure, organizing 28 exhibitions in multiple cities with over 200 artists.

Solo site-specific painting exhibition at the famed Rainbo Bar in Chicago.

“I sent a half-dollar down the line to the vendor, never expecting to see any change and only half expecting a beer. It came back full after passing through 14 pairs of hands, and I thought that either we are getting considerate of our fellow man in Chicago or else we’re going soft.”
Nelson Algren - Sun Times Chicago October 1959

The Standards Variance exhibition, held at Public Access from May 12 to June 10, 2017, curated by Brandon Alvendia and Greg Ruffing, showcased a diverse group of artists. It explored speculative urban proposals in Chicago, challenging conventional development narratives and highlighting grassroots perspectives. With contributions from over 30 artists, the exhibition featured installations and rotating displays, fostering creative discussions on alternative urban futures. The digital publication accompanying the exhibition, containing essays by the organizers, preserves the dialogue on the complexities of urban space and the possibilities it holds.

IDLE HANDS - Further Adventures in Metaphysical Arbitrage: 100 Years of the Readymade, in collaboration with artist-run space pilot projects, reimagined Marcel Duchamp's Fountain for its centennial celebration. The project featured local and national artists in an open-call exhibition and readymade competition. On September 9th, the event seamlessly combined an opening reception and awards ceremony, with distinguished judges like Erica Battle (PMA), Blake Bradford (Lincoln/Barnes), and Kate Kraczon (ICA), alongside viewer participation, recognizing outstanding contributions with cash, trophies, and other prizes.

"The Great Good Place" by Brandon Alvendia is a collaborative project exploring the intersection of art and everyday life, showcasing exhibitions that transform ordinary spaces into sites of artistic inquiry. Drawing inspiration from Chicago's artist-run culture, the project reimagines spaces like garages and living rooms to address the loss of "third places" crucial for fostering social connections. Through exhibitions at threewalls' gallery spaces, the project engages artists and curators in dynamic conversations about community and civic engagement.

Exhibition was host to sixteen Chicago based collectives and featured over 100 artists include TRUNK SHOW, Michelle Grabner, ADDS DONNA, THE FRANKLIN, D Gallery, and others, contributing to a vibrant exploration of communal spaces and artistic expression.

The exhibition, "The Physical Impossibility of a Hangover in the Mind of Someone Drinking," curated by Brandon Alvendia, featured artists Ben Fain, Claire Fontaine, Peter Hoffman, Martin Kippenberger, Selina Trepp, and Madame Vincent. It took place on Saturday, March 24th, 2012, at The Hills Esthetic Center in Chicago. The exhibition explored themes of reflection, recuperation, and renewal following revelry, featuring multimedia artworks and relics that blurred the line between art and everyday life. It also included rituals celebrating artist-run initiatives and offered handcrafted cocktails featuring Chicago's own Jeppson's Malört bitter.

This project comprised an immersive installation that featured a fragmented and loosely recreated version of the Camp Gay space in MONUMENT 2. The elements were partially crafted from hazy memories and partly derived from a plethora of less-than-archival-quality documentation, mostly of the camera phone variety. In the project space, featured a modest display of Camp Gay documentation and related materials.

Live internet performance series for public intimacies, curated by Abigail Satinsky, Tufts University Art Galleries (SMFA at Tufts), Boston.

Saturday editor, online publication and participatory livestream. Highlights include OFFICE PARTY 2: Post-Conference Online Mixer, Networking Event, and Zoom Happening featuring dozens of artists projects, panel discussions, and other pandemic community support. Project was exhibited as part of "The Long Dream" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

A traveling 5-act tragicomedy based on the founding of Futurism by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1908. TRUNK SHOW, a itinerant exhibition space, had artists design limited edition bumper stickers for Raven Falquez Munsell and Jesse Malmed's beat-up Ford Taurus.

Chambres d'Amis was a three-act process-oriented experimental drama set in Portland, ME that slowly unfolded over the course of one summer.
Written and Directed by Brandon Alvendia and
Produced by the Institute for American Art.

This research-focused mixed-media installation reinterpreted "Theater of Revolt," the third act of "Be Black, Baby" by National Intellectual Television within Brian DePalma's film Hi, Mom. The project intricately blurred lines between reality and fiction, destabilizing dichotomies of audience/actors, activism/entertainment, and white/black.

Project was curated by Extinct Entities (Nixon/Romero/Stepter) and organized by Daniel Tucker at the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, University of Chicago.

subvision. kunst. festival. off. was a contemporary art festival taking place in Hamburg in summer 2009. 31 artists’ groups, off-spaces, and research projects from 19 countries that developed outside established institutions and commercial viability created an exciting presentation forum with exhibitions, artist’s talks, performances, concerts, readings, and video screenings in a container park in the contested port area of Hafen City.

The experimental documentary How to Disappear in America (for $500 or less) was exhibited with i-cabin, UK for the duration of the festival. Filmed in Chesterhill, Ohio as part of the Harold Arts Residency.

Hybrid Practices seeks to bring artistic experimentation and research-based scholarship together. Hosted by Visual and Critical Studies to promote academic and artistic hybridity as a way to examine the social forces that shape our lives.

Hour long conversation and audience Q&A with artist Jeremy Chen for his solo exhibit Devices, Tools, Objects, and Props.

Initiated in 2013, LAUNCH Invitational Residency is a nomination-based professional development program for artists emerging from Chicago area undergraduate schools.

The 2018 Curatorial Forum invited Chicago professionals and other visiting curators, and featured a series of peer-led, closed-door sessions focused on critical questions relevant to contemporary practice and context.

Visiting Artist Faculty Summer Lecture Series at Osher Hall. Other lectures in the series included Layla Ali, Huma Bhabha, Abigail Deville, Rick Lowe, Jim Shaw, among others.

Talk given in conjunction with "Long View / Long Game" an exhibition recognizing the 30 year anniversary of the art gallery at College of Dupage.

Symposium was the capstone event at the conclusion of the ICI Intensive in New Orleans.

Rapid fire interviews between artists and art professionals.

Artists were invited to speak on connecting to a work in the Art Institute collection.

Apartment Show is a stage-play based on an experience of the artist in a private art show in the late 2000s.

Edited "A Pandora's Box of Non-Games" for the publication accompanying the exhibition. "A Rule By Nobody" explored the boredom, frustration, and pleasure of bureaucratic routines. Inspired by Hannah Arendt's definition of bureaucracy, the exhibition delved into the energy of office labor, transforming it into a multi-part exploration of overflowing inboxes, Xerox rooms, red tape, and moments of escape within the monotony of nine-to-five. Hosted by Sector 2337.

Brief story written in response to the question "What is Revolutionary Today?" for inclusion in the newsprint publication for the survey exhibition The Left Front: Radical Art in the “Red Decade,” 1929-1940.

An experimental review written and edited collectively, by a group of around a dozen participants, during a 70 minute group workshop, Peer Review, organized by Sofia Leiby (Chicago Artist Writers) and Amanda SanFilippo (Locust Projects.) Its time-limited and collaborative context should be considered when reading.

Interview with Coco Picard about publishing, curating, and playing with the life/art divide.

The Independent Curators International (ICI)/Prospect 3 (P3) Curatorial Intensive brought together emerging curators from across the country for the opportunity to exchange ideas, develop their curatorial projects, and explore Prospect.3: Notes for Now.

Session leaders included Andrea Andersson, Tumelo Mosaka, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Valerie Cassel Oliver, Elivira Dyangani Ose, Prospect.3 curator Franklin Sirmans, Claire Tancons, among others. Weeklong discussion and site visits culminating in a public symposium at the CAC, New Orleans.

Copycat Academy was a weeklong masterclass intensive administered by Hannah Hurtzig, founder of Mobile Academy Berlin. Morning discussion groups, afternoon workshops, and evening lectures were hosted at the Theatre Centre in Toronto as part of the yearly citywide Luminato Festival.

Session guests included Jennifer Doyle, Kendell Geers, Sheila Heti, Terence Koh, Bruce LaBruce, Marten Spangberg, with daily affirmations delivered by masterclass leader AA Bronson of General Idea. Support provided by the City of Toronto with additional support by L'Oreal.

Degree in Studio Art. Studied with Julia Fish, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Kerry James Marshall, Jennifer Montgomery, Dan Peterman, Ben Russell, Deborah Stratman, Hamza Walker, among others.

Degree in Studio Art. Studied with Gaylen Gerber, Joseph Grigely, Gladys Nilsson, Laurie Palmer, Claire Pentecost, Barbara Rossi, Anne Wilson, among others.