Mark Bradford’s Help Us
On view now at the Carnegie International’s Life on Mars exhibition is Mark Bradford’s (Season 4) rooftop installation Help Us, a white stone sculpture that is theoretically visible from Google Earth.
The 55th Carnegie International at the Carnegie Museum of Art runs through January 11, 2009 and recognizes the work of forty emerging and established artists, including Art:21’s Vija Celmins (Season 2), Barry McGee and Mike Kelley (both Season 1).
Life on Mars: Carnegie International 2008
The 2008 installment of Carnegie International, the oldest international survey of contemporary art in North America, will explore what it means to be human in the world today. CI08, titled Life on Mars, opens to the public on May 3, though related programs and events are already underway. A four-session lecture series, Approaches to Contemporary Art & the 55th Carnegie International will explore how art has changed in the last 50 years. Two sessions remain on Thursday, April 17 and 25.
CI08 is curated by Douglas Fogle, the Carnegie’s curator of contemporary art. On April 6, Fogle posted the following on the exhibition blog:
“In David Bowie’s song, ‘Life on Mars,’ he sings about a world spinning out of control. Bowie poses the question of whether Mars is a place to escape to, or whether we’re on Mars already, because this world we live in has become so strange and unfamiliar to us. The title [of CI08]–appropriated from the Bowie song…poses a poetic question of longing, and of trying to connect. It relates not only to a literal search for extra-terrestrial life, but also to sending out signals in the dark, and hoping to get a response…Every curator is a product of their particular time, as well as their own personal history. This show is the show I had to do right now.”
The forty emerging and established artists in the exhibition include Mark Bradford (Season 4), Barry McGee, Mike Kelley(both Season 1), Vija Celmins (Season 2), Doug Aitken, Cao Fei, Phil Collins, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Ryan Gander, Thomas Hirschhorn, Sharon Lockhart, Marisa Merz, Noguchi Rika, Thomas Schutte, David Shrigley, Rudolf Stingel, Paul Thek, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Rosemarie Trockel, to name just a few. CI08 closes on January 9, 2009.
Prospect.1 New Orleans Coming in November
Slated as the largest biennial of international contemporary art ever organized in the United States, Prospect.1 New Orleans will open November 1, 2008 and run through January 18, 2009. Founding director and chief curator of this new biennial, Dan Cameron (former Senior Curator of the New Museum and recently appointed Director of Visual Arts of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) in New Orleans) was inspired to organize an exhibition in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The recently announced list of 75+ artists from around the globe includes Art21 artists Allora & Calzadilla, Mark Bradford (both Season 4), Cai Guo-Qiang, Arturo Herrera (both Season 3), Janine Antoni, and Trenton Doyle Hancock (Season 2).
Calling for a total of 100,000 square feet of exhibition space, Prospect.1 New Orleans will be divided among several buildings in various historic New Orleans neighborhoods, including the Warehouse District, the Bywater, French Quarter, the Marigny, and the Treme. A number of existing institutions and halls - CAC, New Orleans Museum of Art, and Ogden Museum of Southern Art - will be used, along with converted warehouses, commercial structures and other public spaces and found sites throughout the city.
How will Prospect.1 New Orleans help the damaged city? “[It] will contribute to the cultural rebuilding of New Orleans by creating an entirely new narrative about the city, its architecture, and its history. By re-branding the city as a place where the visual arts can thrive, the long-term aim of Prospect.1 New Orleans is to create an entirely new category of cultural tourism for the city, and to broaden its image overall.”
While the Prospect.1 website is good for answers to logistical questions, and briefly addresses the terms “global art” and “biennial,” what is perhaps most important here (as demonstrated in the above excerpt) is attention to the city’s predicament and progress-Prospect.1 tells us the state of things in New Orleans.
For further information and updates, please go to the Prospect.1 New Orleans website.
Don’t Miss: Lecture with Mark Bradford
On Wednesday, March 19, Season 4 artist Mark Bradford discusses the inspirations for his large scale multimedia works in the exhibition Maps and Manifests: New Works by Mark Bradford. On view at the Cincinnati Art Museum through May 25, three of Bradford’s most recent collages are showcased in this exhibition. Aaron Betsky, Director of the Museum, says, “Bradford’s pulsating art will help visitors better understand the changing landscapes of America and how global issues are relevant to their own communities today.”
Watch a 40 second trailer produced by the Museum’s Teen Advisory Board:
Reservations are required. Call 515-721-ARTS or visit the CAM website.
Mark Bradford | Super 8 Movies
EXCLUSIVE: Mark Bradford at his home in Los Angeles, with excerpts from his childhood Super 8 home movies.
Mark Bradford transforms materials scavenged from the street into wall-sized collages and installations that respond to the impromptu networks—underground economies, migrant communities, or popular appropriation of abandoned public space—that emerge within a city. Bradford’s work is as informed by his personal background as a third-generation merchant in Los Angeles as it is by the tradition of abstract painting developed worldwide in the twentieth century.
SEE: More images, videos, and news for Mark Bradford.
LEARN: Mark Bradford is featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Paradox of the Art:21—Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.
DISCUSS: What do you think about this video? Leave a comment!
PHOTO | Mark Bradford, production stills, 2008. Courtesy the artist.
VIDEO | Producer: Susan Sollins & Nick Ravich. Camera: Bob Elfstrom. Sound: Ray Day. Editor: Monte Matteotti. Artwork courtesy: Mark Bradford.
Mark Bradford in New York
Beginning later this week, Season 4 artist Mark Bradford will be featured in two upcoming exhibitions in New York City. The first is a solo show at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. (home to fellow Art21 artists Kara Walker, Shahzia Sikander, and Arturo Herrera), opening this Thursday, January 17 at 6pm and running through February 23.
Across town at the New Museum, Bradford’s work is included in part two of the Museum’s opening exhibition, Unmonumental. In Collage: The Unmonumental Picture, recent collages by eleven artists (Season 4 artist Nancy Spero among them) will be installed on the gallery walls surrounding the sculptures already on view. Using varied strategies and materials, each artist exploits the formal and ideological power of juxtaposing found images to create everything from social and political commentaries to Surrealist fantasies and personal confessions. Collage: The Unmonumental Picture runs from January 16 through March 30. View images from the exhibition here.
On Saturday, January 19 at 3pm, in conjunction with Collage: The Unmonumental Picture, Mark Bradford will take part in a panel discussion with fellow featured artists Christian Holstad and Wangechi Mutu, moderated by Chief Curator Richard Flood. The event is free with museum admission. Read more about the event.
Spotlight on Paradox: Mark Bradford
Mark Bradford was born in Los Angeles, California in 1961. He received a BFA (1995) and MFA (1997) from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia. Bradford transforms materials scavenged from the street into wall-sized collages and installations that respond to the impromptu networks “underground economies, migrant communities, or popular appropriation of abandoned public space” that emerge within a city. Drawing from the diverse cultural and geographic makeup of his southern Californian community, Bradford’s work is as informed by his personal background as a third- generation merchant there as it is by the tradition of abstract painting developed worldwide in the 20th Century. Bradford’s videos and map-like, multilayered paper collages refer not only to the organization of streets and buildings in downtown Los Angeles, but also to images of crowds, ranging from civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s to contemporary protests concerning immigration issues. Mark Bradford has received many awards, including the Bucksbaum Award (2006); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2003); and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2002). He has been included in major exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2006); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2003); REDCAT, Los Angeles (2004); and Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2001). He has participated in the XXVII S√£o Paulo Bienal (2006); the Whitney Biennial (2006); and inSite: Art Practices in the Public Domain, San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico (2005). Bradford lives and works in Los Angeles.
Watch a clip from Bradford’s Art:21 segment:
About his work, Bradford says,
“An artist has a choice to be as political or as apolitical as anyone else who’s making choices. So I don’t think an artist is necessarily apolitical if he or she doesn’t make overtly political work. But so much of contemporary art is engaged in the ideas that are circulating in the atmosphere, in the press and the media, and oftentimes we’re influenced by that. So it seems comfortable to me to have that bleed into my work. For me, the subtext is always political.”
(taken from the companion book Art in the Twenty-First Century 4, pp. 132-3).
Read more about his work and watch additional clips on his Art:21 webpage here.
Have you experienced Bradford’s work in person, or did you have an opportunity to view his segment in one of the hundreds of Art21 Access ‘07 events that have been taking place all month? Share your thoughts on Mark Bradford by leaving a comment below.
Event photos: Art21 at Studio Museum in Harlem 10-4-07
Last night at the Studio Museum in Harlem, Season 4 featured artist Mark Bradford spoke with Thelma Golden, the Museum’s Director and Chief Curator, following a screening of his Art21 segment (excerpted from the Paradox episode). They discussed his career and its early origins in the Studio Museum’s 2001 exhibition, Freestyle, as well as the inspiration he finds in the geographies and economies of Los Angeles. This lively and upbeat conversation was then opened up to the audience who, after a little prodding, came forward with lots of questions. Many thanks to the Studio Museum’s programming team for inaugurating their beautiful brand-new screening space with this special event.
Up next is Laurie Simmons speaking at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) tomorrow at 12:30pm, along with a screening of Romance and a reception graciously sponsored by Bloomberg. I√±igo Manglano-Ovalle will then speak at the Bronx Museum at 3:00pm, after a screening of Ecology. Finally on Sunday, Mark Dion will talk with Queens Museum of Art’s Director of Exhibitions, Valerie Smith, in tandem with a screening of Ecology. And there will be more screenings next week! Read about all 10 NYC premiere events here.
View more photos on Art21’s Access ‘07 Flickr group page at http://www.flickr.com/groups/art21-access07/pool/.
Art21 Artists’ Talks Tonight, Coast to Coast
In a perhaps unprecedented twist in the history of Art21 public programs, three Season 4 featured artists will be speaking at various cultural institutions tonight in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York City.
Painter Lari Pittman, profiled in Romance, will talk at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) at 7pm in the Bing Theater, following a screening of this episode. Mark Dion will participate in a panel at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University (in the Engineering and Architecture building’s Lecture Hall, Room 126) along with curator Sheryl Conkelton and artist/Tyler Professor Winifred Lutz, moderated by art historian Philip Glahn. Select artists’ segments will also be screened. Finally, Mark Bradford, featured in the Season 4 episode Paradox, will converse with Thelma Golden, Director and Chief Curator at the Studio Museum in Harlem at 7pm.
All of these events are free. For more information on Lari Pittman’s talk, visit LACMA’s site here. Email Jennie Shanker, Tyler’s Foundation Dept Chair at shanker@temple.edu about the panel discussion featuring Mark Dion. And reservations are recommended for Mark Bradford’s screening at the Studio Museum. Call 212-864-3500 to reserve a space.
Neither New Nor Correct: New Work by Mark Bradford
Neither New Nor Correct, the latest body of work by Season 4 artist Mark Bradford, recipient of the Whitney’s 2006 Bucksbaum Award, is now on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art, as of September 14, 2007. With intricate surfaces composed of numerous layers of salvaged paper, Bradford’s most recent large-scale works, made in 2007, will be shown on the Museum’s main floor.
Bradford’s works allude to the physical layers of the metropolitan environment of South Central Los Angeles, where the artist lives and works. Repurposing the advertising posters that he finds built up in layers on walls, windows, and light posts in his neighborhood, Bradford creates collage works of extraordinary impact, exploring the concept of place, and reflecting on the social and economic patterns of his community. Evocative of archeological excavation and the language of maps, these works delve into personal and collective memory, suggesting hidden histories and submerged traces of the past. Bradford’s collages recall the torn-poster works of French affichiste artists such as Raymond Hains and Jacques de la Villeglé, who worked in Paris in the 1950s and 1960s.
For this exhibition at the Whitney, Bradford has created new works that layer advertising posters with string and other collage materials. The artist builds up his surfaces and then sands back into them, revealing hidden depths. Water, which can erase, erode, or act as a medium for mixing disparate elements, becomes a powerful metaphor in this series.
The title of both the exhibition and accompanying catalogue is a comment on the limits of knowledge – or on information that looks plausible, but perhaps isn’t. It refers to a description on an 18th-century map of the world, disingenuously labeled as “new and correct.”
Neither New nor Correct: New Work by Mark Bradford is on view through November 25, 2007 at the Whitney Museum.
As part of Art21 Access ‘07, Mark Bradford will speak at the Studio Museum in Harlem on Thursday, October 4, following a screening of the episode in which he is featured, Paradox. Call 212-864-4599 x264 to reserve a space at this special event.
