b. 1961, Los Angeles, California/Lives and works in Los Angeles, California

The social dynamics of community, determined by race, class, gender, sexuality, migration, and their attendant stereotypes, inspire Mark Bradford’s work in collage, video, photography, and installation. Bradford explores public space by excerpting and recomposing its contents “from billboard posters to beauty salon endpapers” to create abstract compositions whose grids, lines, and fields of color flicker with the visual and informational juxtapositions that characterize the urban experience. Through the formal limitations and restrictions that he imposes on his artistic practice, Bradford structures his works’ explosive energy, elegantly corralling it into an abstract narrative that reflects our geographical and geo-political surroundings.

Bradford received his BFA (1995) and his MFA (1997) from the California Institute of the Arts. Selected solo and two-person exhibitions include Mark Bradford, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2007); LA >< ART, Los Angeles (2006); Grace and Measure Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York (2005); Bounce: Mark Bradford and Glenn Kaino REDCAT, Los Angeles (2004); Very Powerful Lords Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York (2003).

Group exhibitions include Eden’s Edge: Fifteen LA Artists Hammer Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles (2007); Street Level: Mark Bradford, William Cordova, Robin Rhode Nasher Museum, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (2007); Meditations in an Emergency Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, Michigan (2006); Day for Night: Whitney Biennial 2006 New York; Sao Paolo Bienal (2006); African Queen Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (2005); Fade (1990-2003) Luckman Gallery and University Fine Arts Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles, and Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles; Snapshots: New Art from Los Angeles UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; (traveled to Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami Beach, 2001); and Fresh Cut Afros Watts Towers Gallery, Los Angeles (2000).