Joe Bradley New Paltz
Since making his debut in New York in the early 2000s, Joe Bradley has developed a mutable visual style through paintings, drawings and sculptures, that bridges the art historical canon with popular culture and personal experiences. While art history is an undercurrent in Bradley’s oeuvre, his awareness of these influences frees him to make them his own.
For his new exhibition, Bradley will present a large group of recent paintings and works on paper. Painted on the floor, his large gestural works challenge the legacy of Abstract Expressionism and record the detritus and history of the studio, resulting in radiant and layered paintings that evoke a wealth of associations. Executed in pencil, pen, or marker, the new drawings often suggest the framing logic of comic strips while refusing any narrative structure inherent to the genre. These spontaneous compositions feature figures, text and abstractions uncovered from Bradley’s imaginative reference library of jokes and enigmas.
Joe Bradley (b. 1975, Kittery, Maine, US) lives and works in New York. He trained at the Rhode Island School of Design and first exhibited in New York in 2003. The artist was given a solo show at MoMA PS1 three years later. Bradley was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial and The Forever Now, a landmark exhibition of contemporary painting at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2014. Recent solo exhibitions include Joe Bradley, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA (2017); Joe Bradley, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2017); Château de Boisgeloup, Gisors, France (2017); Bozar / Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, Belgium (2017) and Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2014). His work is held in the following collections, among others: Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris, France; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.