The Art World's Black Artists of the Moment: Mark Bradford & Kara Walker

[Idaeo]

I first encountered Bradford's work this past summer at the Venice Biennale Art Festival, where he was the sole artist representing America for 2017. He's known for his abstract paintings and sculptures, where he uses colors and textures to comment on African American identity.

His exhibition in Venice featured a replica of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's Virginia home. The exterior was the traditional colonial architecture with its famous rotunda.

When you walked into the side entrance (which alluded to the separate entrance Jefferson's slaves used), the first thing you encountered was this massive dark bloblike sculpture suspended from the ceiling. You had to maneuver around it just to continue through the exhibit.

As you continued through the exhibit, the dark paper mache type sculptures seemed to grow all throughout the building.

this was titled "medusa"

this video was the last piece in his Venice exhibit. It was a man, the artist's south LA neighbor, slowing walking away from the camera with a strong, but effeminate stride.



Kara Walker is known for her silhouette pieces depicting graphic antebellum scenes of the south.

She has pieces at The Broad LA, MOMA NYC & SF, houston, boston...and just completed a new piece in New Orleans

After a Blowup Kara Walker Lets Off Steam in New Orleans

 

[Idaeo]

Mark Bradford folded his lanky frame into a Modernist chair in the mezzanine space at the downtown Los Angeles outpost of the global mega gallery Hauser & Wirth. After more than a year of globetrotting, he’s come home.

Last May, Bradford represented the United States at the 2017 Venice Biennale, where he transformed the neoclassical U.S. pavilion into a site of menace and decay — a mordant reflection on the violent legacies of U.S. history and the state of American democracy under the nascent Trump administration.

In November, he debuted an eight-painting work spanning nearly 400 linear feet in the circular galleries of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., reflecting on a decisive battle in the U.S. Civil War: Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg in 1863.

And earlier this month, he was in London, installing a 32-panel painting in the new U.S. embassy there. For those pieces, Bradford immersed himself in the U.S. Constitution — incorporating the entire text into the work.

“It’s definitely been stadium tours,” Bradford said of his very busy year. “Now, I want to play small clubs.”

Though how small, given Bradford’s stature, is anybody’s guess. Bradford was about to open an exhibition of new paintings at Hauser & Wirth — his first solo commercial gallery show in L.A. since a 2002 exhibition at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects — and already major collectors were taking an interest. During our interview, Interscope Records co-founder Jimmy Iovine and Guess co-founder Maurice Marciano, of the Marciano Art Foundation museum and board co-chair at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, were cruising through the galleries for a VIP preview of Bradford’s latest work.

“Love it, love it, love it,” said Marciano, nodding at Bradford as he passed by.

Mark Bradford on making art in post-shock phase of the Trump era and how comics channel this moment