Background
He grew up in a United States Marine Corps family.
He grew up in a United States Marine Corps family.
Downey earned a fine art master"s degree in painting and sculpture from the Slade School of Art, where he studied under Bruce Mclean.
Downey currently lives in Berlin. Pratt Institute drew him to New York City in 1998. His first feature-length film, Public Discourse, a documentary about street art has been screened around the world including the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and the Copenhagen Documentary Film Festival.
lieutenant includes work by street artists such as Swoon, Obey Giant, Revs, Nato, Desa, Ellen Harvey, JJ Veronis, and Johnny Swing from the Rivington School, and features music by Japanther.
Public Discourse was distributed by Video Data Bank. He has exhibited in venues such as the Tate Modern, the International Cooperation Administration in London, and Mass Multimedia over Coax Alliance in the United States of America, Peacock Visual Arts, in Scotland, Kunsthalle Dominikanerkirche in Osnabrück, Kunstcentret Silkeborg Bad, in Denmark.
In 2008, Downey sprayed green paint on the shopping windows of Berlins historical KaDeWe mall, which the owners reported to the police as an act of vandalism. However, Downey had been contracted by the Lacoste clothing brand (along with 11 other street artists) for an exhibition at KaDeWe celebrating the 75th anniversary of the brand, and he maintained that he was just fulfilling his contract.
Die Tageszeitung speculated that the incident might have been a media stunt by Lacoste.