MARK BRADFORD (b. Los Angeles, CA, 1961) lives and works in Los Angeles.
Mark Bradford’s art is very much tied to the city of Los Angeles where he finds the materials he uses in his collages – materials that he finds on the street and transforms on canvas into grid-like, multi-layered abstract paintings. Visually beautiful, these paintings, as well as his video works, evoke the streets and buildings of downtown Los Angeles, as much as the diverse cultural and geographic makeup of the Southern Californian community where the artist grew up.
Bradford studied at the California Institute of the Arts, receiving an MFA in 1997 and a BFA in 1995. He has won numerous awards for his work, including the Bucksbaum Award (2006); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (2003); the Nancy Graves Foundation Grant (2002); and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2002). His work has been included in numerous important exhibitions at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; as well as the São Paulo Biennial (2006); the Whitney Biennial (2006); the Liverpool Biennial (2006); and, most recently, Street Level (2007) at the Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, Durham, NC.
Bradford is represented by Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York.