This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series.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...
This photograph is part of the series titled “Iris Tingitana project” (2007) focusing on the disappearance of the iris...
LAB (2013) conjures the body as the trace of a sooty hand appears, spectrally, on a crumpled paper towel...
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...
Ben Shaffer’s Ben Deroy (2007) is part performance, part self-portrait, and part spiritual vision...
In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...
In addition to Yang’s signature drying rack and light bulbs, Office Voodoo includes various office supplies like CDs, paper clips, headphones, a computer mouse, a stamp, a hole puncher, a mobile phone charger...
Barbara Kasten’s Studio Construct 51 depicts an abstract still life: a greyscale photograph of clear translucent panes assembled into geometric forms, the hard lines of their edges converging and bisecting at various points...
Casa de la cabeza (2011) is a drawing of the words of the title, which translate literally into English as “house of the head.” Ortiz uses this humorous phrase to engage the idea of living in your head....
Choke documents the artist filming a wrestler “choking out” his teammate until he is unconscious...
Itch explores the relationship between technology and daily human experience with a motorized arm that extends from within the gallery’s wall, moving up and down while holding a projector that shows a desperately scratching pair of hands....
The five works included in the Kadist Collection are representative of Pettibon’s complex drawings which are much more narrative than comics or cartoon...
Wheat’s work is built on a strong conceptual framework that weaves together commentary on social and political issues and the radical potential for change...
The five drawings included in the 101 Collection are representative of Pettibon’s characteristic cartoonish style...