Beschreibung:

Mark Bradford But You Better Not Get Old 2003 photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium, permanent-wave end papers and additional mixed media on canvas 72 x 84 in. (183 x 213.5 cm.)
Provenance Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York Private Collection, New York Private Collection, Switzerland Exhibited Columbus, Wexner Center for the Arts, Mark Bradford May 8 – October 10, 2010, then traveled to Boston, Institute of Contemporary Art (November 19, 2010 – March 13, 2011), Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art (May 28 – September 18, 2011), Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art (October 16, 2011 – January 15, 2012), San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (February 18 – May 20, 2012) Literature C. Bedford, Mark Bradford exh. cat., Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, 2010, pl. 3 (illustrated) Catalogue Essay “What painters fetishize—surface and translucence—I learned all about that through architecture and the sides of buildings. I understand transparency because of the erosion of paper." MARK BRADFORD 2009 Mark Bradford’s But You Better Not Get Old from 2003 is a monumental work of collaged permanent-wave end paper, "materials with a built-in history," in the words of the artist, aggregated and distressed to form the ethereal yet tactile surface that has become the artist’s unique signature. Both of and about Bradford's world, this large-scale painting captures the urban decay that defines the Los Angeles sprawl of Bradford's Leimert Park neighborhood. Created during the years of the artist's initial rise to fame in the early 2000s, But You Better Not Get Old is an exceptional example of Bradford's innovative and intuitive process, which results in textured abstractions that serve to both obscure and obviate the artist’s personal history and his recognition and perception of the histories of his surrounds. Bradford spent a significant amount of time while growing up working in his mother’s hair salon, an experience which served as a sort of training ground and orientation for the artist’s aesthetic sensibilities. This impressive work is comprised of permanent-wave end papers, the small, diaphanous sheets of paper used in the hair salon business. The papers are used by stylists to wrap the hair around a small rod after which it is chemically and heat treated in order to establish the Jheri curl style popularized by the likes of Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. Being as thin as they are, these papers come thousands to a pack, and Bradford here has torched them in order to obtain the singed edge around each piece. Each fragile paper develops its own particular color, the charred edges forming dark lines to frame the translucent squares. Bradford then assembled a wealth of these papers across the composition's body, creating linear striations that would be nearly impossible to draw by hand. Chains of squares proliferate vertically and horizontally, interspersed with reproductions of the wave end papers that Bradford has painstakingly photocopied. The resulting effect is a multilayered assembly of translucent and opaque elements in smoky gradations of yellow, black, beige and gray. Ghostly in their presence, and yet physically attainable, the papers have a very specific immediacy. Layered and opaque now, they allude to a history both of the artist and of the artwork’s own creation. As a boy working in his mother’s salon, Bradford was instructed to always keep moving, never to doubt a move because it could always be corrected or amended in some way or another. As he states, “There will be a dilemma, and I can kind of fix it. Yeah, it’s the same: I do that with the art, I do it with everything…with everything. My work is all like heads of hair.[…] It’s the same thing with my paintings. The work simply has to embody a certain energy, and I know exactly when it has it.” (M. Bradford in conversation with C. Eliel from C. Bedford (ed.), Mark Bradford exh. cat., Ohio: Wexner Center for the Arts, 2010, p. 60) Bradford’s work with these papers was, in the words of Christopher Bedford, “a calculated way to enter the deeply freighted historical conversation of abstract painting from a vantage point that was pointedly groun