Joe Bradley, Struth (2010). Via Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
American artist Joe Bradley is showing his work simultaneously at two New York Galleries: Gavin Brown’s Enterprise and Canada Gallery on the Lower East Side. Each gallery exhibits works by the artist in a completely different style. For his first show at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Bradley shows large colorful abstract paintings made with oil sticks instead of paint brushes. The canvases are full of the artist’s footprints, dirt, dust, references to comic book characters, and abstract expressionist and primitivist symbolism. At Canada, his longtime art gallery, he gives viewers large black and white silkscreens of male silhouettes.
Joe Bradley, Human Forms (2011). Via Canada Gallery
More text and images after the jump…
Joe Bradley, Pigpen (#2). Via Gavin Brown Enterprises
Bradley’s oeuvre has moved from the Color Field paintings he showed at the Whitney Biennale in 2008 to large-scale Expressionist canvases such as those on display at Mouth and Foot Painting at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise. His method is to collect studio grit and incorporate it into his artwork creating primitive and often messy abstractions.
Joe Bradley, Big Boy (2010). Via Gavin Brown’s Enterprises
Joe Bradley, Mouth and Foot (Ichthus) (2010). Via Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
The new works recall techniques employed by his predecessors Basquiat and Guston while also appropriating influences from the drawings of Paleolithic cave paintings. These works differ greatly from the artistic vocabulary employed in his concurrent show Human Forms at Canada Gallery where black and white silkscreens of male figures are captured doing funny gestures while squatting and bending.
Joe Bradley, Installation view. Via Gavin Brown’s Enterprise
The difference between the two shows reveals the artist’s shifting approaches to his art, his various mediums, and techniques. Bradley’s work has quickly grown in popularity which has resulted in a reported 1,100% increase in the price of his works over the span of five years according to Bloomberg. All works at the Mouth and Foot Painting exhibit at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise were sold out by the time actor Steve Martin walked through the door, stated Bloomberg.
Joe Bradley’s work was exhibited at the Whitney Biennale in 2008, at Charles Saatchi‘s Abstract America exhibition in London in 2009, and at Chelsea gallery Mitchell-Innes & Nash in 2010 as well as various other international art galleries and institutions.
Joe Bradley, Human Forms (2011). Via Canada Gallery
Joe Bradley, Human Forms (2011). Via Canada Gallery
Joe Bradley, Human Forms (2011). Via Canada Gallery
Joe Bradley, via Interview Magazine
-R.A. Proctor
Related Links:
Exhibition Page [Gavin Brown Enterprise]
Exhibition Page [Canada]
Indecision: On Joe Bradley’s Human Forms at Canada [Artfagcity]
How Joe Bradley’s Prices Surged 1,100% in Five Years: Hot Art [Bloomberg]
Cave Painter: Joe Bradley [Art in America]
Up From Abstraction [New York Observer]
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