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“I go through the arc of a relationship with every single painting that I do”

Mark Bradford is an acclaimed American visual artist known for his large-scale collaged paintings that explore themes of race, class, and urban life. Some key points about his career and work:

Bradford was born and raised in South Los Angeles, and worked in his mother’s beauty salon growing up, using materials like hair salon endpapers and dyes in his early artworks. He studied at the California Institute of the Arts, earning his BFA in 1995 and MFA in 1997.

Artistic style:

Bradford incorporates a wide range of found materials into his large-scale collaged paintings, including billboards, posters, flyers, and end papers from his mother’s hair salon.

He layers these materials, often wetting them so the colors bleed, and then sands down the surface to reveal patterns and textures.

This process of layering and excavating the surface is described as analogous to archaeological digging or plumbing the depths of the psyche.

Bradford’s work explores social and political structures that objectify marginalized communities, particularly African Americans.

His abstract style, which he terms “social abstraction”, is rooted in the belief that all materials and techniques are embedded with meaning.

Recurring themes include identity, migration, vulnerability, resilience, and the Black experience in urban America.

Bradford often incorporates maps, timetables and other navigational ephemera as metaphors for how marginalized groups have had to identify and navigate non-safe spaces.

He has been Influenced by Abstract Expressionists like Pollock and de Kooning, as well as Rauschenberg’s combines. 

Bradford’s signature style developed from his early use of end papers from hair salons, which he has since expanded to include other types of paper.

His works often have a disjointed, map-like quality, with tangled grids and lines that could represent veins or freeways.

In summary, Mark Bradford’s innovative abstract paintings powerfully reflect the complexities of race, class and urban life in America through his unique process and choice of materials. His socially-engaged practice aims to pluralize notions of “blackness” and give voice to marginalized communities.

Most important works:

Daddy, Daddy, Daddy: an early abstract collage work that incorporates signed permanent-wave end papers and cellophane used in hair dyeing, reflecting Bradford’s early experiences working in his mother’s beauty salon.

Pickett’s Charge: a large-scale abstract painting exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

We The People: a 32-canvas painting of the text of the U.S. Constitution installed permanently at the U.S. Embassy in London.

Finding Barry: an installation at the Hammer Museum that carved the AIDS rates of different U.S. states into the walls, addressing issues of marginalization.

Mithra: a “Noah’s Ark” sculpture made from posters and plywood panels, created as an installation for the people of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Exhibitions:

Mark Bradford at Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin

The exhibition will run from September 6, 2024 to March 10, 2025 at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart in Berlin.

It will be Bradford’s first solo exhibition in Germany and will feature both existing and newly commissioned works.

The exhibition will explore the history of the Hamburger Bahnhof building as a former railroad station through Bradford’s signature large-scale abstract paintings and installations.

Group Exhibition “A Movement In Every Direction: Legacies Of The Great Migration“

Bradford will be included in this group exhibition taking place from June 8 to September 22, 2024.

The exhibition explores the artistic legacies of the Great Migration, the movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North in the 20th century.

It is co-organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and Mississippi Museum of Art.