Mark Bradford

The Devil is Beating his Wife (and detail)

2003
Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, permanent-wave end papers, stencils, and additional mixed media on plywood

335.3 x 609.6 cm

Mark Bradford’s abstractions unite high art and popular culture as unorthodox tableaux of unequivocal beauty. Working in both paint and collage, Bradford incorporates elements from his daily life into his canvases: remnants of found posters and billboards, graffitied stencils and logos, and hairdresser’s permanent endpapers he’s collected from his other profession as a stylist. In The Devil is Beating His Wife, Bradford consolidates all these materials into a pixelised eruption of cultural cross-referencing. Built up on plywood in sensuous layers ranging from silky and skin-like to oily and singed, Bradford offers abstraction with an urban flair that’s explosively contemporary.

Mark Bradford
Kryptonite

2006

Mixed media,collage on paper

249 x 301 cm

Mark Bradford

The Devil is Beating his Wife (and detail)

2003
Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, permanent-wave end papers, stencils, and additional mixed media on plywood

335.3 x 609.6 cm