Artist

Mark Bradford

Born in Los Angeles, 1961 and lives in Los Angeles

Bradford was born and raised in South Los Angeles. He later attended Crescent Heights Elementary School. His mother Janice owned a beauty salon in Leimert Park. Bradford and his family moved to a then largely white neighborhood in Santa Monica when he was 11, but his mother still maintained her business in the old neighborhood where he also worked for a while. When he got out of high school, he got his hairdresser’s license and went to work at his mother’s salon.
Bradford began his studies at the California Institute of the Arts in 1991 at the age of 30. He earned a BFA in 1995 and an MFA in 1997.
Bradford is known for grid-like abstract paintings combining collage with paints. His collage Orbit (2007), contains a magazine image of a basketball placed at the heart of a dense lattice of black LA streets. Created by the additive and subtractive processes of collage and décollage, as well as with paint, Orbit appears like aerial views of contorting, mutating, and decaying city whose tiny, intricate street grids can no longer maintain their structural integrity against unknown epic forces. Bradford’s improvisational command of these large areas is also able to suggest the formidable energies of mass consumption and, perhaps more important, its counterpart, the mass generation of trash.

Exhibitions
Exhibitions
You’ve Got to Know the Rules…to Break Them
Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz have selected a group of artists from their personal collection who have been...
01 Dec 2015 - 08 Oct 2016
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
Exhibitions
Wasteland. New Art from Los Angeles
The exhibition Wasteland. New Art from Los Angeles will take place in two parallel venues in Paris, the...
13 Mar 2016 - 17 Jul 2016
Thaddaeus Ropac – Pantin
Paris
Exhibitions
Mark Bradford: Receive Calls on Your Cell Phone From Jail
Through a signature collage process, Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bradford abstracts the geographic,...
06 May 2016 - 14 Aug 2016
Contemporary Art Museum St Louis
Exhibitions
Progressive Praxis
The De la Cruz collection inaugurates its 2017 program with the group exhibition “Progressive Praxis”. The...
29 Nov 2016 - 29 Nov 2017
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
Exhibitions
Force and Form
“Force and Form” brings together a group of artists whose practices recognize a shift in visual culture...
01 Dec 2017 - 30 Nov 2018
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
Exhibitions
Never Free to Rest
The exhibition brings together works by six artists who utilize the radical language of abstraction to...
11 Nov 2017 - 16 Dec 2017
kurimanzutto
Mexico City
Exhibitions
Mark Bradford at Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong
Hauser & Wirth’s first branch in Asia at H Queen’s, presents an exhibition of new paintings by...
26 Mar 2018 - 12 May 2018
Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Exhibitions
More / Less
More / Less groups works by several international contemporary artists, produced during the last thirty...
01 Dec 2018 - 30 Sep 2019
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
Exhibitions
Mark Bradford: Cerberus
First solo of Mark Bradford at Hauser & Wirth’s London, “Cerberus” gathers the new...
01 Oct 2019 - 21 Dec 2019
Hauser & Wirth London
London
Exhibitions
Agnes Martin and Mark Bradford: On a Clear Day
The installation combines the works by American artists Agnes Martin (1912–2004) and Mark Bradford...
18 Jul 2019 - 17 Nov 2019
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
San Francisco
Exhibitions
From Day to Day
De la Cruz Collection‘s collective 2019-2020 exhibition is titled “From Day to Day” and features...
01 Oct 2019 - 30 Nov 2020
de la Cruz Collection
Miami
Art Spaces
Hauser & Wirth London
Galleries in London
Hauser & Wirth Zürich
Galleries in Zurich
Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong
Galleries in Hong Kong
Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz
Galleries in Switzerland
Related Content
Articles
Mark Bradford inaugurates the new venue of Hauser & Wirth in Menorca – Read
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