Museum Exhibition Catalogues, Monographs, Artist's Projects, Curatorial Writings and Essays
Erase. Erase and reclaim. Erase memory, reclaim history. Erase the past, recall the present. These are the words that come to mind while thinking of Mark Bradford's work: a work built--literally, physically built--through a methodical process of erasure. Bradford has invented for himself a method of creative destruction. Bradford is an object and image maker. Most of the time, but not all the time, his objects end up hanging on a wall. I am resisting calling his work paintings; I am resisting calling Bradford a painter. His art carries the memory of some paintings, and he himself, I believe, values the voices of some painters. But nevertheless, what he does defies in my eyes a certain history of representation that painting, representational or not, figurative or abstract, has historically embodied. I do not mean by this that Bradford programmatically intends to position his work against a specific medium, or even attempts to revive, debunk or dismantle a conversation about the living pulse of painting today. The question just does not register. We are talking here about something else. Bradford makes art. And art is no more synonymous with painting than painting is synonymous with art. Bradford is elaborating a form, an object that will match the subject he is addressing. Bradford is some sort of archeologist, an archaeologist of the instant, of the present. A present captured with a split-second delay. Philippe Vergne, excerpted from Mark Bradford: Merchant Posters.
Erase. Erase and reclaim. Erase memory, reclaim history. Erase the past, recall the present. These are the words that come to mind while thinking of Mark Bradford's work: a work built--literally, physically built--through a methodical process of erasure. Bradford has invented for himself a method of creative destruction.
Edited with introduction by Nicole Fleetwood. Text by Asale Angel-Ajani, Elisabetta Grande, Mitchell Jackson, Jessica Lynne. Conversation between Mark Bradford and Liri Longo.
A social practice art project expanding skill-based employment opportunities for the incarcerated
Pbk, 6.5 x 9 in. / 168 pgs / 96 color / 2 bw. | 5/28/2024 | In stock $38.00
Published by Hauser & Wirth Publishers. Edited with introduction by Nicole Fleetwood. Text by Asale Angel-Ajani, Elisabetta Grande, Mitchell Jackson, Jessica Lynne. Conversation between Mark Bradford and Liri Longo.
In 2017, American multidisciplinary artist Mark Bradford (born 1961) initiated a partnership with Rio Terà dei Pensieri, an Italian nonprofit working with two Venetian prisons. Through this collaboration, Process Collettivo was formed: an ongoing project that aims to increase employment opportunities within prisons and the city of Venice as a whole, while raising awareness about the political and environmental conditions that disproportionately affect marginalized populations. This eponymous volume provides extensive documentation of the project, including photos, testimonials by incarcerated people, and additional information about carceral systems and the people impacted by them. Edited and with an introductory text by scholar Nicole Fleetwood, the book includes essays that contextualize Bradford’s project through analyses of Italian and American prisons, a reflection of creativity as an outlet for the incarcerated and a discussion of the history of social practice art. Process Collettivo also features a conversation between Bradford and former Rio Terà president Liri Longo, in which they reflect on the obstacles and successes of their joint venture.
Published to accompany Los Angeles–based artist Mark Bradford’s (born 1961) 2014 exhibition at Hauser & Wirth, Zurich, this limited-edition volume is presented in a linen-bound case and takes the form of a Z-fold. It features Bradford’s ten-part series Floor Scrapers and a large-scale reproduction of a single work in a removable foldout.
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co.. Edited with text by Christopher Bedford, Katy Siegel. Text by Peter James Hudson, Anita Hill, Sarah Lewis, Katy Siegel, Zadie Smith, James Baldwin, W.E.B. DuBois. Interview by Christopher Bedford.
Mark Bradford’s exhibition for the US Pavilion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, titled Tomorrow Is Another Day, is born out of the artist’s longtime commitment to the inherently social nature of the material world. For Bradford, abstraction is not opposed to content; it embodies it. Finding materials for his paintings in the hair salon, Home Depot and the streets of Los Angeles, Bradford renews the traditions of abstract painting, demonstrating that freedom from socially prescribed representation is profoundly meaningful in the hands of a black artist.
Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day is not only a catalog for Bradford’s pavilion project; it is a different kind of book, a substantial publication that blends the biographical with the historical and political. Essays from outside the art world—by Anita Hill, Peter James Hudson, W.E.B. Du Bois and Zadie Smith—narrate a series of interwoven stories about Reconstruction, civil rights and the vulnerable body in urban space, fleshed out with vivid archival photographs and documents. The book also includes significant new texts from curator Katy Siegel and art historian Sarah Lewis, as well as a revealing interview with Bradford, offering a new understanding of the work of one of today’s most influential contemporary artists.
Mark Bradford was born in 1961 in Los Angeles, where he lives and works. Best known for his large-scale abstract paintings that examine the class-, race- and gender-based economies that structure urban society in the United States, Bradford’s richly layered and collaged canvases represent a connection to the social world through materials. Bradford uses fragments of found posters, billboards, newsprint and custom-printed paper to simultaneously engage with and advance the formal traditions of abstract painting.
Published by Verlag für moderne Kunst. Foreword by Larys Frogier. Text by Clara M. Kim, Doryun Chong.
This volume documents three monumental collage paintings by celebrated Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bradford (born 1961), titled "The Tears of a Tree," "Falling Horses" and "Lazy Mountain," which were inspired by the artist's visits to Shanghai.
Published by White Cube. Edited by Susan May, Honey Luard. Text by Christopher Bedford, Mark Bradford, Susan May.
Mark Bradford (born 1961) uses materials found in the urban environment such as billboard sheets, posters and newspapers to create expansive, multi-layered paintings comprised entirely of paper. Focused on Bradford's recent body of work inspired by the interstate road network, this new monograph takes its title from a chapter in the memoirs of President Dwight D. Eisenhower about his experience as a member of the Transcontinental Motor Convoy of 1919, which informed his support for a nationwide highway system in the US in the 1950s. Topographical points of reference shift in and out of focus in Bradford's abstract compositions, characterized by ruptures, fractures and incisions that echo the social disruption that followed when interstate highways ripped through communities like Bradford's own in south central Los Angeles. Designed in collaboration with the artist, this volume includes an interview with Susan May and a new essay by Christopher Bedford.
Published by Gregory R. Miller & Co./Aspen Art Press. Text by Malik Gaines, Ernest Hardy, Philippe Vergne, Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson.
This book gathers for the first time an extensive selection of American artist—or “builder and demolisher,” as he describes himself—Mark Bradford's gorgeous, searing and heavily textured “merchant posters.” The original printed posters, collected by Bradford from around his Central Los Angeles neighborhood, are brightly colored local advertisements that target the area's vulnerable lower-income residents. For Bradford, they serve as both the formal and conceptual underpinnings of his works on paper, décollages/collages that engage with the pressures of the cityscape. “The sheer density of advertising creates a psychic mass, an overlay that can sometimes be very tense or aggressive,” he notes; “If there's a 20-foot wall with one advertisement for a movie about war, then you have the repetition of the same image over and over—war, violence, explosions, things being blown apart. As a citizen, you have to participate in that every day. You have to walk by until it's changed.” Eagerly anticipated, this is the first large-scale publication by a major publisher about the work of this important and increasingly influential artist. Artist and writer Malik Gaines considers Bradford's play with signs in relation to literary and performative theories of African-American forms; writer and cultural critic Ernest Hardy addresses social issues, in Los Angeles and more broadly, raised by Bradford's source material; Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson examines the language in the work as it relates to Concrete poetry; and Dia Art Foundation Director Philippe Vergne looks at the surface of the work and Bradford's processes of mining and excavation.
Mark Bradford: My Head Became a Rock
Mark Bradford: Tomorrow Is Another Day
Mark Bradford: Tears of a Tree
Mark Bradford: Through Darkest America by Truck and Tank
Mark Bradford: Merchant Posters