Mark Bradford at Hauser & Wirth Menorca

Hauser & Wirth Menorca opens with an exhibition of Mark Bradford

“Mark Bradford: Masses and Movements” is the exhibition chosen by Hauser & Wirth to inaugurate its new gallery in Menorca, in what is also the artist’s first solo show in Spain. From 19 July to 31 October 2021.

Mark Bradford 2021 — Photo by Brandon HicksMark Bradford — Sugar Factory — 2021

Source: Hauser & Wirth. Images: Mark Bradford, 2021. Photo: Brandon Hicks ·· Mark Bradford: “Sugar Factory”, 2021. Mixed media on canvas, 183 x 244 cm / 72 x 96 in. Photo: Joshua White / JWPictures. All images: © Mark Bradford. Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth have decided to inaugurate its new gallery in Menorca with one of the biggest names on the contemporary art scene: the American artist Mark Bradford. “Mark Bradford: Masses and Movements” includes an installation of globe sculptures, a site-specific wall painting, and several recent paintings based on Waldseemüller’s planisphere (16th century), considered the first map to include the word ‘America’.

For much of his career, Bradford has been interested in maps, and how they influence our conception of the world. “So much of what we understand about landmasses comes from cartographers and their relationships to power,” Bradford explained, “and the need to always keep a place for Europe at the centre of history”.

Using fragments of Waldseemüller’s planisphere, Bradford applies caulk that drips and runs across the surface, using bleach to endow the materials with a wide range of tonalities and textures. In this way, as the gallery explains, “the visual language evokes multiple narratives that conjure images of a world in motion: continental drift, animal migrations, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, or the displacement of indigenous peoples”.

Born in 1961 in Los Angeles, Mark Bradford began his studies at the California Institute of the Arts at the age of 30. Today he is known for his abstract collage paintings, becoming the US representative at the 2016 Venice Biennale. A year later he painted ‘150 Portrait Tone’, a large-scale wall painting at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 2018, his painting ‘Helter Skelter I’ was auctioned at Phillips London for almost $12 million, a record for a living African-American artist. The buyer was the American supercollector Eli Broad.