Mark Bradford (b. 1961) is best known for large-scale abstract paintings made from a variety of collaged materials, including billboard paper, hairdressing supplies, newsprint, carbon paper, and other papers layered together (or stripped apart) and then manipulated with nylon string, caulking, and sanding. Often incorporating references to the social conditions of a particular location, these works not only extend the possibilities of contemporary painting, they offer an unusual and highly individual examination of the economies (o... Read more

Mark Bradford (b. 1961) is best known for large-scale abstract paintings made from a variety of collaged materials, including billboard paper, hairdressing supplies, newsprint, carbon paper, and other papers layered together (or stripped apart) and then manipulated with nylon string, caulking, and sanding. Often incorporating references to the social conditions of a particular location, these works not only extend the possibilities of contemporary painting, they offer an unusual and highly individual examination of the economies (often defined by race, gender, and class) that structure urban society in the United States, and specifically in Leimert Park, the South Central Los Angeles neighborhood where the artist lived as a child and continues to maintain his studio.

Organized by the Wexner Center for the Arts and co-presented in San Francisco by Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and SFMOMA, this comprehensive survey of Bradford’s career to date will be on view at both venues, offering more than 50 works from 2000 through 2010. Included in YBCA’s presentation is the large-scale work Detail, an ark-like sculpture reconstructed from components of Mithra, a piece originally created for the 2008 Prospect.1 biennial in New Orleans in response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Also on view at YBCA will be Bradford’s 2011 work Rat Catcher of Hamelin. The work is a large-scale four–panel mixed media collage created for the Istanbul biennial. 50 billboards collected from all around South-Central Los Angeles form the basis of this socially charged abstract art. Sanded, stripped surfaces reveal what lies below.