Mark Bradford

Cerberus

2 October - 21 December 2019

London

‘Cerberus’ is Mark Bradford’s first exhibition at Hauser & Wirth in London and extends across the entirety of the gallery’s spaces. The exhibition of new work, including the film ‘Dancing in the Street’ (2019), sees Bradford return to ancient mythology, a consistent source of inspiration for the artist. Specifically, he now engages the many headed dog guarding the entryway to Hades, Cerberus. It is a particularly resonant metaphor for Bradford, who has always been fascinated by interstitial spaces and figures. In fact, of the relationship between his art and his community engagement, Bradford has often declared his imperative to have one foot firmly planted in each. ‘Cerberus’ is an exhibition dedicated to places difficult and in-between, where conflicts arise, but also where the hope of resolution is to be found.

Fundamental to these works is a process of layering. Just as the very fabric of each painting is formed from strata of pigmented paper which are scored, lacerated and stripped away, Bradford collides a multiplicity of references. The longer timeline of myth-making combines with events from more recent history and a trajectory of painting from the Hudson River School to Robert Rauschenberg via Asger Jorn. One of the universal themes which the artist has explored throughout his career, namely the distribution of power within societal structures and the impact on the individual, comes to the fore again in this exhibition. As Bradford explains, ‘I have always been interested in pulling the world that exists beyond the studio walls, and outside the art world, into the work.’ The titles ‘Cerberus’ and ‘Gatekeeper’ (2019) make metaphorical reference to notions of containment, of pressure building to an incendiary point, and also the idea of a border as a juncture or gathering place.

Bradford’s distinctive vernacular eschews literal readings, yet a point of departure in developing the new works is the riots in Los Angeles known as the Watts Rebellion, which flared up in August 1965 and raged over six days. The process of mining archive material unearthed a report on the riots commissioned by the California Governor’s office in 1965. Entitled ‘Violence in the City – An End or a Beginning?’, it reveals the subjective nature of attempts by those in positions of power to rationalise both the social injustice which was a catalyst for the riots, and the resulting police brutality inflicted on the black community. Bradford has long been interested in the ways in which populations, and particularly marginalised communities, are contained through the infrastructures of the urban environment. Map-like grid motifs, a recurrent theme in the artist’s work, emerge in the monumental work ‘Cerberus’ (2019), creating an interplay between soaring aerial viewpoints and the pictorial space which extends out on a horizontal axis. A series of red ‘hot spots’ embedded into the surface of these paintings evoke the intensity of a tipping point, the ignition that occurs when a barrier is breached.

The fabric of the city of Los Angeles is central to the video installation ‘Dancing in the Street’ (2019), which features the iconic song penned by a trio of songwriters including Marvin Gaye, and was recorded by Martha and the Vandellas in 1964. Given the context of the civil rights movement and riots at the time the hit song was released, Dancing in the Street took on renewed significance as a call to action when many took to the streets protesting for social change. For this project, images of the three women and the audience are layered over the urban landscape to haunting effect. To create the video, black-and-white footage of the band’s live performance was projected from a van onto the landmarks of the industrial area of South Los Angeles where Bradford’s studio is located. ‘Dancing in the Street’ (2019) has a timeline which takes in more than five decades of history, and invites consideration of the civil unrest that shaped the intricacies of the city out of which the song emerged.

The topological markers of the city increasingly dissolve as Bradford continues towards resolute abstraction as seen in the painting ‘A five thousand year old laugh’ (2019). The works featured in the exhibition share a marked fluidity of form and composition as the artist further develops a visual language rooted in his visceral approach to his materials. The resulting surfaces are alive with webs, intersecting networks and liquid reflections which Bradford has described as ‘ghosts of an interaction’. They bring to mind a language of European painting, in particular the work of the CoBrA artists that Bradford encountered during the period he lived in Amsterdam in his twenties. Here his ability to bring about a form of ‘alchemy’ in his works is apparent; they undergo a transformation as if subject to the searing intensity of a chemical reaction or a process of oxidation.

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Talk: Tate Modern Monday 30 Sept, 6.30pm

Mark Bradford will be in discussion with acclaimed curator Michael Auping (Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, Texas) at Tate Modern as part of the American Artist Lecture Series.

Selected images

The path to the river belongs to animals

2019

Dancing in the Street

2019

Frostbite

2019

Sapphire Blue

2018

Installation views

About the Artist

Mark Bradford

Mark Bradford (b. 1961 in Los Angeles; lives and works in Los Angeles) is a contemporary artist best known for his large-scale abstract paintings created out of paper. Characterized by its layered formal, material, and conceptual complexity, Bradford’s work explores social and political structures that objectify marginalized communities and the bodies of vulnerable populations. Just as essential to Bradford’s work is a social engagement practice through which he reframes objectifying societal structures by bringing contemporary art and ideas into communities with limited access to museums and cultural institutions.

Using everyday materials and tools from the aisles of the hardware store, Bradford has created a unique artistic language. Referred to frequently as ‘social abstraction,’ Bradford’s work is rooted in his understanding that all materials and techniques are embedded with meaning that precedes their artistic utility. His signature style developed out of his early experimentation with end papers, the small, translucent tissue papers used in hairdressing; he has since experimented with other types of paper, including maps, billboards, movie posters, comic books, and ‘merchant posters’ that advertise predatory services in economically distressed neighborhoods.

After gluing an image pre-selected for its historical significance onto canvas, Bradford outlines it with rope or caulk before affixing numerous layers of different types of paper. The artist then lacerates, erodes, and excavates the surfaces of his paintings using ‘tools of civilization’ to reveal intersections between the layers of signifying materials, thereby transforming and expanding the medium of painting.

Born in South Los Angeles, Bradford moved to LA’s beachside Santa Monica neighborhood with his mother at age 11. Throughout his childhood he worked in his mother’s beauty salon in Leimert Park where he first developed a curiosity in artistic and creative expression, and after high school, Bradford spent his summers traveling in Europe. His experiences visiting museums and consuming art left an enduring impression, and for the first time, at the age of 31, he began his formal arts education.

Bradford received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Valencia in 1995 and his MFA from CalArts in 1997. Bradford received his first solo exhibition, ‘Floss,’ at the San Francisco Art Institute’s Walter & McBean Galleries in 1998 and his New York museum debut in ‘Freestyle’ at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001. In 2006, Bradford participated in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art where he won the coveted Bucksbaum Award, leading to his first major solo museum exhibition the following year at the Whitney, ‘Neither New nor Correct.’ In 2008, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Bradford participated in Prospect.1 in New Orleans, and in 2010, the Wexner Center for the Arts presented a retrospective of his work that traveled for two years to five institutions around the US.

In 2015, Bradford received his first solo museum exhibition in Los Angeles, ‘Scorched Earth’ at the Hammer Museum, and that same year co-founded Art + Practice in Leimert Park with his longtime partner, Allan DiCastro, and philanthropist and art collector Eileen Harris Norton.

In 2017, Bradford represented the United States at the 57th Venice Biennale with his solo exhibition ‘Tomorrow is Another Day.’ Complementing the presentation at the US Pavilion and in keeping with his practice to engage marginalized communities, Bradford launched Process Collettivo, a six-year partnership with the Rio Terà dei Pensieri social cooperative that provides skills training and employment opportunities to incarcerated men and women in and around Venice. Following the Biennale, ‘Tomorrow is Another Day’ traveled to the Baltimore Museum of Art, where Bradford collaborated with Greenmount West Community Center (GWCC), a community art space offering educational resources to families in Baltimore.

In November 2017, Bradford unveiled ‘Pickett’s Charge’ at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, and in 2018, installed a 32-canvas painting of the text of the US Constitution titled ‘We The People’ for permanent display at the US Embassy in London. In 2019, Bradford produced ‘Life Size,’ a large image of a police body camera on a vinyl banner at the entrance to the backlot at the inaugural Frieze LA fair and on wheatpaste posters throughout Los Angeles. Bradford also created a limited-edition print series with the same image to raise money for the Art for Justice Fund to support career development opportunities for people transitioning out of prison.

Bradford has exhibited to acclaim internationally and received numerous awards and honors, including his appointment to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019, the US Department of State’s Medal of Arts in 2014, his appointment as a National Academician in 2013, and a MacArthur Fellowship Award in 2009. Permanent installations of Bradford’s work include ‘What Hath God Wrought’ (2018) on the campus of the University of California, San Diego, and ‘Bell Tower’ (2015) at the Tom Bradley International Terminal Departures Hall at Los Angeles International Airport.

Recent solo exhibitions of Bradford’s work include ‘Masses and Movements’ at Hauser & Wirth Menorca (2021), ‘End Papers’ (2020) at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; ‘Cerberus’ (2019) at Hauser & Wirth London; and ‘Los Angeles’ (2019) at the Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai.