If you are in Chicago on or around the 18th of September, be sure to check out Los Angeles-based artist Mark Bradford’s show at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Bradford is best known for his large paintings and installations of what he calls subject mapping, objects collected and arranged from his immediate environment.
Curated by Christopher Bedford, Bradford’s show is a ten year survey of the artists work and it’s his first exhibition which takes a look at all his work in media.
Included in the exhibition is Pinnochio is on Fire, 2010, a sound installation that excavates African-American cultural events and phenomena.
Bradford’s titles of his pieces often reflect his experience growing up in South Central Los Angeles and often allude to stereotypes, race, gender and class.
An anthropologist of his own environment, Bradford describes himself as a “modern-day flaneur,” saying, “I like to walk through the city and find details and then abstract them and make them my own. I’m not speaking for a community or trying to make a sociopolitical point. At the end it’s my mapping. My subjectivity.”
Accompanying the exhibition is a catalog of essays by the show’s curator, Hilton Als and others.
Mark Bradford
220 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60611-2643
Ph. 312-280-2660
