Mark Bradford

Works

Mark Bradford’s abstractions unite high art and popular culture as unorthodox tableaux of unequivocal beauty. Working in both paint and collage, Bradford incorporates elements from his daily life into his canvases: remnants of found posters and billboards, graffitied stencils and logos, and hairdresser’s permanent endpapers he’s collected from his other profession as a stylist. In The Devil is Beating His Wife, Bradford consolidates all these materials into a pixelised eruption of cultural cross-referencing. Built up on plywood in sensuous layers ranging from silky and skin-like to oily and singed, Bradford offers abstraction with an urban flair that’s explosively contemporary.

Mark approaches printmaking as he does his paintings, creating layers from source material which relates to his local environment…

…“I’m drawn to collage because it’s the immediate juxtaposition of activity. In the city, I have that same feeling—Nigerian business next to Korean business next to Jewish business,”

A Los Angeles-based hairdresser and self-described "beauty operator" who also earned his MFA from Cal Arts, Mark Bradford garnered quick fame…