Mark Bradford
Untitled
This untitled work by Mark Bradford is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series. It’s contrasting dark and vibrant tones presage his later series of works. These larger works share a map-like quality, looking like aerial views of some scarred urban landscape. Black and red lines sear across the compositions, made through Bradford’s unique layering and burning techniques. The 2012 print—a small shard, perhaps, from one of these larger views of the land—shares this approach. Greyed fragments crisp along the edges into rock-like formations, engulfed in the umber and orange colors of fire.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, artist Mark Bradford draws material, inspiration, and methods from the city streets that surround him. His large-scaled collage paintings for which he is known are often built up through layers of repurposed street advertisements, hair papers, flyers, and scraps. Cementing these fragments together with paint and overlaying recycled street art stencils, Bradford evokes rich, colorful works that are alive with texture, and teeming with shards of the material world. In his earliest works, Bradford relied heavily on hair papers (used during the process of permanently curling hair), pilfered from his mother’s beauty salon in L.A. Singing the edges, Bradford created unsteady grids and jumbled geometries shot through with color.