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Layered ‘paintings’ inspired by old Shanghai
THE first major museum exhibition in Asia by Mark Bradford, a renowned artist based in Los Angeles, is running at the Rockbund Art Museum through May 3.
Born in 1961 in Los Angeles, Bradford has garnered critical attention for his dynamic practice that redefines the tradition and legacy of painting.
His “paintings” are in fact made without paint, but instead are textured and layered surfaces that are built up through a process of accretion and erasure.
Using materials he gathers from the neighborhood around his studio in South Los Angeles, including billboards and merchant posters, Bradford works and reworks the surfaces of his canvas using polyester cord, caulking, bleaching agents and commercial sanders as well as other materials like end papers used in hair salons and carbon paper.
Commissioned specifically for this exhibit, three monumental collage paintings fill each of the gallery floors of the museum.
Impressive visits
These exuberant new works titled “The Tears of a Tree,” “Falling Horses” and “Lazy Mountain” are inspired by the artist’s visits to Shanghai and what he found to be the dynamic melding of disparate cultures, economies and functions in the city — the sprawl, heavy industry, old port city, the former French Concession and the glamour of the nouveau riche.
Coming across colonial-era maps of Shanghai at a local market, Bradford became interested in the partitioning of the city during the international zone period, changes to the Chinese address system under the imposed Japanese system, and the pre-industrialization landscape of the city.
The paintings are informed by the massive changes in the urban landscape that he witnessed in the two visits he made over the last five years.
Each of the 12-meter long works, created by the nuanced layering and removal of paper, are installed in the museum’s galleries, which are stripped down to expose the windows of the building normally covered up to create an enclosed white cube.
This simple gesture, conceived by the artist as part of the installation, not only brings daylight into the space but creates a physical and symbolic connection to the city. Bradford sees this as bridging his art with the museum’s early 20th century building and the waterfront of the Bund, the historic center of the former British and American concession.
New sculptures
The exhibition also includes a grouping of new sculptures titled “The Loop of Deep Waters.”
Suspended on the fifth floor gallery, the buoy-shaped forms make up of Bradford’s signature materials. Paper, caulking agents and cords are characterized by rugged surfaces that seem to contain the layers of time while floating in space. Together, the works evoke a universe where shifts and forces of gravity operate by an alternate set of rules to imagine a poetic, almost magical landscape of abstraction.
Date: Through May 3, 10am-
6pm, closed on Mondays
Address: 20 Huqiu Rd
Admission: 30 yuan
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