Education Lab Launches in Hong Kong with Investigation of Mark Bradford’s ‘Merchant Posters’

Participants first explored Bradford’s ‘Merchant Posters’ body of work through a series of workshops hosted in July 2024. Guided by local artist and printmaker David Wong, the students created their own interpretations of ‘Merchant Posters,’ in dialogue with found materials from their local neighborhoods, as well as the LA neighborhoods where Bradford sources the materials that inspire his works.

Bradford then collaborated with the participants to realize a mural in The Bridge+ depicting a map of Hong Kong, installed adjacent to the ‘Merchant Posters’ students created in workshops.

The Education Lab is part of our commitment to inclusive learning programs that instigate a dialogue between art, artists and diverse audiences. Located at our galleries in Menorca, Somerset, Downtown Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Chillida Leku Museum, each Lab is a collaboration with a local community group, school or university. The interactive spaces take their starting point from one of our international artists, facilitating a platform for discovery, discussion and additional resources.

Mark Bradford instigated Hauser & Wirth’s inaugural Education Lab at our Menorca gallery in 2021, followed by a subsequent Lab in Downtown Los Angeles in 2022, both in partnership with local schools and non-profit organization Nest Global. The gallery has now hosted a total of 14 Education Labs globally.

About ‘Merchant Posters’
Mark Bradford’s ongoing body of work, ‘Merchant Posters,’ is named for the material that forms the basis of each work: printed posters advertising local businesses and services, which often respond to the emergency needs of a particular neighborhood.

Bradford is drawn to these posters because of what they reflect about the socio-economic health of the communities in which they appear. These advertisements speak to the needs of the people who pass by them every day.

Bradford collects these localized, community-oriented advertisements and takes them back to his studio where he paints, papers, and sands the posters, turning them into layered compositions.

While Bradford’s paintings retain some of the original text and found graphic elements, the posters’ original contents become less readily readable and slightly out of focus, such that the viewer is asked to look a bit more closely in order to excavate their meaning.

Bradford’s choice of material is significant and acknowledges the specific social conditions under which his works are produced. These ‘Merchant Posters,’ taken from the world—specifically, from the LA neighborhoods Bradford knows—are full of memories.

About ‘Mark Bradford. Exotica’
Beginning 26 September, Hauser & Wirth will present ‘Exotica,’ a solo exhibition of new, formally innovative works by Mark Bradford. In an exhibition that extends the artist’s recent formal and thematic investigations while pushing his practice towards distinctly new inventions, Bradford probes the enduring impact of colonialism and concepts of ‘otherness’ through the lens of individual experience.

Consisting of around 20 new paintings, ‘Exotica’ introduces a signature staining technique, wherein the artist uses caulk to create shadow-like imprints upon the canvas. These forms inject Bradford’s layered compositions with a trace of fantasy, strangeness, and memory. In its diversity of form and material—also encompassing works created with fabric dye, inked-paper, and oxidized paper—the exhibition reflects the continued evolution of Bradford’s play with figuration.

About Mark Bradford
Mark Bradford (b. 1961 in Los Angeles) is a contemporary artist known for his large-scale abstract paintings created out of paper. Characterized by its layered formal, material and conceptual complexity, his work explores social and political structures that objectify marginalized communities and the bodies of vulnerable populations. After accumulating layers of various types of paper onto canvas, Bradford excavates their surfaces using power tools to explore economic and social structures that define contemporary subjects. His practice includes painting, sculpture, video, photography, printmaking, and other media. In addition to his studio practice, Bradford engages in social projects alongside exhibitions of his work that bring contemporary ideas outside the walls of exhibition spaces and into communities with limited exposure to art.

Bradford received his BFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in1995 and his MFA from CalArts in 1997. He has since been widely exhibited internationally and received numerous awards. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place at Hauser & Wirth, New York; the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art; Hauser & Wirth, Menorca; the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Hauser & Wirth, London; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC; and Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai.