Mark Bradford
Untitled, 2009 (unique sculptures)
Mixed media, paper mache and collage
Approx. 9.5 inches diameter
Produced for the Museum by Lisa Ivorian-Jones
Price Upon Request
Untitled, 2009 (series of seven unique sculptures) are variously made from newspaper, merchant posters from the city streets of South Central Los Angeles, and silver foil - all sanded down in Bradford's own specific style of paper mache and collage, sculptural in form. Some soccer balls incorporate the use string that has been inlaid by the artist and then removed, the negative space roughly delineating the form of the soccer ball.
As an African American artist living in Los Angeles, the soccer ball sculptures negotiate notions of identity and cliche, whilst breaking boundaries of cultural expectations and expanding notions of art making. As Bradford has pushed our expectations and understanding of traditional painting through his use of materials that were immediately accessible to him (such as the overlapping hair wraps used for permanents from his mother's hair salon, that were a constant in earlier paintings) Untitled, 2009 are not so readily defined or grasped. Globe like, rough, deliberately misshapen, they have the appearance of beautiful cast offs - directly referring to the urban streets from which they emerged - both by way of material, and Bradford's unmistakable hand.
Mark Bradford was born in 1961 in Los Angeles, where he continues to live and work. He received both his BFA (1995) and his MFA (1997) from the California Institute for the Arts. He is the recipient of the Bucksbaum Award for his contribution to the Whitney biennial in 2006. Recent exhibitions include: ArtPace, San Antonio TX, 2008; "Contemporary Projects 11: Hard Targets—Masculinity and Sport", 2008–2009; Hammer Museum at UCLA, "Prospect.1 New Orleans", 2008- 2009; "Life on Mars, 55th Carnegie International", 2008- 2009; "Order. Desire. Light. : An Exhibition of Contemporary Drawings," Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2008; "Collage: The Unmonumental Picture", 2008; New Museum of Contemporary Art, "Neither New Nor Correct: New Work by Mark Bradford", Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007); "Eden's Edge: Fifteen LA Artists", Hammer Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles (2007); and "Street Level: Mark Bradford, William Cordova, Robin Rhode", Nasher Museum, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (2007).