{"data":{"id":"10212","type":"artist","attributes":{"id":10212,"topgoose_id":2922,"tms_id":10212,"display_name":"Mark Bradford","sort_name":"Bradford Mark","display_date":"1961–","begin_date":"1961","end_date":"0","biography":"\u003cp\u003eMark Bradford works across various\nmediums, creating paintings, sculpture,\ninstallations, video, and prints. In the\nmid-2000s he began to make collaged\npaintings that grapple with ideas of\nurban decay and excavation, as well as\nwith the history of art. Bradford builds\nup the surfaces of these paintings\nwith materials often found on the street,\nincluding advertising posters, billboard\npaper, newsprint, and permanent-wave\nend papers, implicitly referencing the\neconomic livelihood of his South Central\nLos Angeles community and his experience\nworking as a sign maker and hairdresser\nin his mother’s salon. After collaging layers\nof material onto the canvas, Bradford\nuses an industrial sander to obliterate and\nunearth parts of the surface—imparting\nan effect that is painterly, despite its\ndistance from traditional painting. “What\nfascinates me about surface,” he has\nexplained, “is the way in which paper\ncreates depth, but at the same time it still\nhas its singular form. It’s one complete\nthing on top of another. You are not mixing\nblack and white paint.”\n\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"/collection/works/30548\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eBread and Circuses\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/a\u003e, measuring\neleven feet high and twenty-one feet long,\nis a monumental composition, more akin\nto a wall mural. Here, Bradford carefully\nembedded string amid the collaged\nlayers of found paper, suggesting curvilinear\ncity streets, and later sanded through\nthe material to reveal a textured surface\nreminiscent of a woodcut. As it explores the\ntopography that results from the juncture\nbetween the urban and the natural, the\nwork reads like an intricate, indecipherable\nmap of a congested, city landscape.\nBuilding on his interest in Renaissance prints,\nBradford’s articulated composition, like\nhis earlier work, becomes a reflection\non the surrounding world, here constructed\nthrough the very detritus of which that\nworld is composed.\u003c/p\u003e","on_view":false,"artport":false,"biennial":true,"collection":true,"ulan_id":"500116642","wikidata_id":"Q16193971","created_at":"2017-08-30T17:39:48.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-03-31T07:01:59.459-04:00","links":{"artworks":"/api/artists/10212/artworks","exhibitions":"/api/artists/10212/exhibitions"}}}}