This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series.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, exhibited at L. A.’s Hammer Museum as Scorched Earth. 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.
Golden Bridge is part of “Golden Journey”, a series of site-specific performances and installations created during Lin’s residency at Kadist San Francisco...
A steel clothing rack adorned with turbine vents, Moroccan vintage jewelry, pinecones and knitting yarn, these heterogeneous elements are used here to create an exotic yet undefined identity within the work...
Untitled (Wall Street’s Chosen Few…) is typical of Pettibon’s drawings in which fragments of text and image are united, but yet gaps remain in their signification...
Natasha Wheat’s Kerosene Triptych (2011) is composed of three images, one each from the digital files of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Field Museum tropical research archive...
This photograph is part of the series titled “Iris Tingitana project” (2007) focusing on the disappearance of the iris...
The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...
LAB (2013) conjures the body as the trace of a sooty hand appears, spectrally, on a crumpled paper towel...
Federico Herrero’s energetic paintings reflect his experiences on the streets of his native San José, Costa Rica, and in the surrounding tropical landscape...
The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...
Choke documents the artist filming a wrestler “choking out” his teammate until he is unconscious...
Ben Shaffer’s Ben Deroy (2007) is part performance, part self-portrait, and part spiritual vision...
Telescopic Pole is an adjustable telescopic pole that extends vertically from floor to ceiling and is held up by its own internal pressure...
In line with Hernández’s interest in catastrophe, Vulnerabilia (choques) is a collection of images of shipwrecks and Vulnerabilia (naufragios) collects scenes of car crashes...
In this photographic series, Yto Barrada was interested in the logos of the buses that travel between North Africa and Europe...