NYAB Event - Katherine Bradford "New Work"

Katherine Bradford "New Work"

Edward Thorp Gallery

This event has ended.

The recurring themes in these new works are Superman and Ocean Liners. These icons of strength are re-evaluated, and rendered vulnerable. Oscillating between the playful and the serious, the fictive and the real, these enigmatic works often evoke an ominous, disconcerting sensation.

The Superman figure is depicted as engaging in various activities: leaping into action as he leaves a jet stream abstraction in his wake, or relaxing on a deck chair in a seemingly Superman-styled park. Bradford’s new works portray a poignant image of this quintessential figure, which is seen more flailing than flying (perhaps due to the weight of his burden--or inertia). Breaking the stereotype of the impregnable hero, the artist redefines the traditional notions of strength. This symbolic image also provides formal possibilities such as signature color statements and the potential of movement and transcendence.

In Bradford's recent ship images vessels continue to evolve towards an abstracted emblematic vision with the ocean becoming a pictorial and graphic event, figures in suits flee an ocean liner stricken by a lighting-bolt shaped iceberg, advancing in bright red triangular shapes on an agitated sea of blue. States of synthesis or conflict are formulated, as towering forms hover in color fields of luminous, pigmented surfaces, their stark geometry juxtaposed with atmospheric color.

Superman and Ocean Liner subjects become vehicles by which Bradford expresses the power of the latent poetic imagination and the direct pleasures inherent in the painting process. Here she finds her own narrative within the subtlety of found forms amidst mysterious spaces and events.

The artist is a resident of New York and Maine. This will be her second solo exhibit with the Edward Thorp Gallery. She has works in various public collections including The Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Portland Museum, Addison Gallery of America Art and Worcester Museum.