Mark Bradford
Sexy Cash, 2015
7540 Fay Avenue
Mark Bradford's mural, Sexy Cash, plays with form and content on a grand scale to create a boldly arresting abstraction. At the time of the housing market crash, signs with the words Sexy Cash were placed on telephone poles as part of an informal advertising campaign offering to buy up real estate. Bradford re-appropriated these signs into an artistic statement by adjusting the size and breaking down the formal qualities of the poster to create an almost imperceptible ambiguity. The fragmentary nature of this billboard-size work suggests a lighthearted but also poignant critique on the spectacle of advertising.
Mark Bradford’s work is born out of the overlooked material of urban life inspired by advertising and merchant posters. Bradford was born in 1961 in South Los Angeles, California. At the age of 30, Bradford enrolled at the California Institute of the Arts where he received his BFA in 1995 and his MFA in 1997. Bradford uses an additive and subtractive process of collage and de-collage, simultaneous with the use of paint to create large-scale, abstract works. He creates a tactile and layered aesthetic that embodies a transformative and energetic quality. He also incorporates video, print, and sculpture into the context of his wider art practice.
Bradford has received numerous awards and accolades including the MacArthur “Genius” Award, the U.S. Department of State Medal of Arts, the United States Artists fellowship, and the Bucksbaum Award. His work is held in many permanent collections including The Broad Museum, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. He has been featured in the São Paulo Biennial, Brazil; the Liverpool Biennial, UK; InSite, San Diego and Tijuana; and the Whitney Biennial, New York. Bradford lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
13' 9" x 47' 3"
Wall Sponsors: Debby and Hal Jacobs; Larry and Tammy Hershfield
Photos by Philipp Scholz Rittermann