Vonfurstimpressions

Vonfurstimpressions

Vonfurstimpressions

Posing undercover as Alex Vonfurstenberg 1999-2000

Posing undercover as Alex Vonfurstenberg: 1999-2000

Posing undercover as Alex Vonfurstenberg: 1999-2000

THE STORY

THE STORY

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I went out for a year as Alex Von Furstenberg. By day, I was just a stoner Williamsburg artist, but by night, I lived as this conservative guy, sneaking into parties and meeting celebrities.

I went out for a year as Alex Von Furstenberg. By day, I was just a stoner Williamsburg artist, but by night, I lived as this conservative guy, sneaking into parties and meeting celebrities.

I went out for a year as Alex Von Furstenberg. By day, I was just a stoner Williamsburg artist, but by night, I lived as this conservative guy, sneaking into parties and meeting celebrities.

David Henry Nobody Jr.

David Henry Nobody Jr.

David Henry Nobody Jr.

David Henry Nobody Jr.

David Henry Nobody Jr. crashes into the lineage of performance art like a Fluxus prankster with a $20 suit, armed with audacity, a borrowed identity, and a razor blade for slashing through party tents. In a pre-social media New York—when fame still carried a certain mystique and exclusivity—David’s yearlong infiltration of the city’s celebrity elite as Alex Von Furstenberg wasn’t just an art project. It was a playful yet incisive critique of the spectacle of fame, a Duchampian manipulation of identity, and a deeply personal experiment in merging art and life. At a time when the internet was only beginning to reshape culture, Vonfurstimpressions anticipated how the boundaries between real and fabricated would dissolve under the spotlight.

The Genesis of Alex Von Furstenberg

The Genesis of Alex Von Furstenberg

David’s transformation into Alex Von Furstenberg began as an experiment in social infiltration, sparked by a fascination with the untouchable aura of New York’s elite. “I grew up punk rock,” he recalls. “I never believed in celebrities.” But in the late 1990s, curiosity pushed him to test the boundaries of access, fame, and identity. Could he transform himself—physically, socially, psychologically—by simply assuming a name? Von Furstenberg, the real-life scion of a legendary fashion dynasty, became David’s golden ticket. On a whim outside a nightclub, he invoked the name, and doors that had been firmly shut flew open. Champagne flowed, models gathered, and the mythic glow of exclusivity enveloped him.

What began as a single night’s masquerade quickly spiraled into a yearlong performance. By day, David was a stoner Williamsburg artist; by night, he slipped into his $20 thrift-store suit and ventured into Manhattan’s most exclusive parties. His methods were as inventive as they were absurd: slashing through event tents, adding his name to guest lists, or strolling in with a cocktail glass and the confident lie, “I just stepped out for a cigarette.” His encounters ranged from the sublime to the surreal—Barry White one night, Hillary Clinton the next. At one point, he even pushed through a mosh pit-like crowd to get an iconic picture with President Bill Clinton.

The Hallucination
of Fame

The Hallucination
of Fame

For David, fame operates less as a privilege and more as a psychological phenomenon—a manufactured hallucination reinforced by endless media repetition. “When you meet someone like Bill Clinton, your brain glitches,” he explains. “You’ve seen their face a million times, stamped into your mind by media. When they’re in front of you, it’s like your brain superimposes all those images onto them. It’s like being on PCP for a second.” This dissonance between media projection and physical reality is at the heart of Vonfurstimpressions.

The project borrows from Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, where the mediated image overtakes and replaces the real, creating a reality defined by appearances. David’s encounters—captured in raw, unpolished photographs—are artifacts of this absurd dynamic. The series isn’t about celebrities as individuals but as cultural symbols, avatars of aspiration, power, and desire. “Celebrities are like substitute family figures,” David muses. “They’re everyone’s weird, imaginary family. You project all your dysfunctions onto them.”

In Vonfurstimpressions, these projections are laid bare, revealing the machinery of fame and its uncanny power to distort perception.

Crashing the Spectacle

Crashing the Spectacle

The late 1990s in New York was a peculiar moment: pre-social media, but steeped in an emerging obsession with visibility and exclusivity. Fame still carried an air of mystique, and access to celebrity spaces was a privilege that David sought to subvert.

Vonfurstimpressions weaponized the tools of privilege—confidence, perception, and a name—to expose how porous these boundaries really were. “The apparatus of Alex was like a ready-made,” David says. “Fans chasing celebrities, handing cameras to strangers—that’s Duchamp and John Cage right there. I just made myself the subject.”

David’s masquerade as Alex Von Furstenberg transformed these interactions into both art and critique. His methods—equal parts ingenuity and audacity—were as performative as the events he infiltrated. By slipping into parties, photographing himself with celebrities, and collecting these moments as cultural artifacts, David highlighted the absurdity of systems designed to elevate some while excluding others. His tools were lo-fi but effective: thrift-store suits, a cocktail glass for added legitimacy, and public gossip columns as his roadmap. The process itself became the art, forcing the audience—and the art world—to question what was real and what was performance.

Vonfurstimpressions in the Digital Age

Vonfurstimpressions in the Digital Age

More than two decades after Vonfurstimpressions, its themes feel eerily prophetic. In a world dominated by curated digital personas and social media performances, David Henry Nobody Jr.’s exploration of fame and identity resonates more than ever. What once satirized the exclusivity of celebrity culture now critiques the mediated reality we all inhabit, where the line between self and spectacle grows ever blurrier.

By bringing Vonfurstimpressions to the blockchain through SuperRare, David gives the work new life in a medium that mirrors its ethos. “The blockchain makes it permanent,” he explains. “It’s a time capsule for renegade art that never fit the traditional art world.” Partnering with SuperRare—a platform disrupting the art market as boldly as David disrupts cultural norms—creates the perfect stage to auction this groundbreaking body of work.

The move to Web3 mirrors the original project’s audacity: just as David infiltrated the VIP rooms of 1990s New York, he now infiltrates the decentralized art world, where boundaries are just as porous and access is rewritten. This isn’t a recontextualization; it’s a continuation. Vonfurstimpressions is no longer a relic of pre-social media New York—it’s a testament to art’s ability to evolve with its time and challenge how we construct identity both on and offline.

At its core, Vonfurstimpressions is more than an art project. It’s a reminder of creativity’s power to infiltrate, disrupt, and illuminate the systems that shape us. As the project moves to auction on SuperRare, it asks us to consider what’s truly permanent in a world of constant reinvention—and whether permanence itself can become a new kind of performance.

Vonfurstimpressions now live on SuperRare.

Vonfurstimpressions now live on SuperRare.

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The story of Vonfurstimpressions

The story of Vonfurstimpressions

The story of Vonfurstimpressions