ART-PRESENTATION: Joe Bradley-Day World
Joe Bradley’s exhibition “Day World” is on presentation at Gagosian Gallery in London. Widely known for his powerful abstract paintings and spontaneous drawings, Joe Bradley has distinguished himself among the artists of his generation with his mutable approach to artmaking, strategically creating bodies of work that seem both at odds with one another and, at the same time, develop a broad, fascinating oeuvre.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Gagosian Gallery
Joe Bradley works in series, pivoting between abstraction and figuration, wielding a range of techniques that draw upon his profound appreciation for the history of modern painting as well as underground comics and outdated periodicals. Bradley grew up in large family in Kittery, Maine. He was fascinated with comics both mainstream and underground, everything from Marvel to R. Crumb. When he began studying art as an undergraduate at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1999, Bradley discovered art history and started devouring paintings from the 1960s and 1970s by the Chicago Imagists and Philip Guston, the spontaneous drawings of Cy Twombly and A. R. Penck, and the heavily layered 19th Century landscapes of Albert Pinkham Ryder. He had his first gallery show in New York in 2003. Just three years later he had his first solo exhibition at MoMA PS1, which included boldly painted monochromatic canvases arranged in geometric formations. These modular paintings investigate the ways that colors exist in relation to each other and to negative space, while subtly evoking architectural structures and human or robotic figures. In recent works Bradley paints fragments of unprimed canvas on the floor, collecting studio debris in swaths of color. Imbuing abstraction with a tactile immediacy, he applies the oil paint in thick layers to create captivating, tessellated compositions. In his drawing practice Bradley uses such unorthodox materials as cardboard scraps, loose paper, and even sticky notes. While artistic precedents appear to be among his works’ influences and inspirations, they never settle into certainty. In many ways Bradley holds a mirror up to the art world itself, finding humor in the ever-shifting trends and traditions of recent art history. One aspect of his practice that remains constant is his emphasis on process: the intuitive motions of the artist’s hand, as well as the effects of material, memory, and environment. For his “Schmagoo Paintings” (2008), Bradley drew invented symbols and doodles with grease pencil on raw canvas, presenting lighthearted subject matter with a direct, gestural confidence. Though vaguely familiar—recalling children’s drawings, comic book sketches, cave paintings, and ideograms, the images are devoid of specific meaning, exploring the very implications of the creative act.
Info: Gagosian Gallery, 20 Grosvenor Hill, London, Duration: 3/10-15/12/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com
