Bradley Hart “Deconstructing Seurat”

Anna Zorina

This event has ended.

Anna Zorina Gallery presents Bradley Hart’s solo exhibition Deconstructing Seurat. The artist expands his Masters Interpreted series by honing in on Georges Seurat’s iconic Neo-Impressionist work, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Hart’s latest body of work investigates the minute aspects of the seminal 19th Century Pointillist painting by presenting multiple facets through a contemporary lens.

Through his Masters Interpreted series, Hart reinvents recognizable artworks that may not be seen in real life but rather frequently on a screen. La Grande Jatte is a familiar painting with a scope that far extends outside the Art Institute of Chicago through its repeated appearance on the Internet, TV and film. The artist reconstructs Seurat’s Pointillist painting method through the matrix of bubble wrap, bringing the Neo-Impressionist style into a contemporary visual realm that is dominated by pixels.

Hart’s inventive technique of injecting paint within each bubble mimics the Divisionist style of creating images through interactions with contrasting neighboring pigments. The viewer imagines the blending of colors allowing for the composition to formally emerge. Close inspections into Hart’s paintings reveal the surprising tones that make up luminous color fields. Through his innovative use of bubble wrap, the artist fuses Pointillism and pixilation to transform a classic painting into cutting-edge contemporary art.

Hart isolates individual figures or select groups as a way of reimagining Seurat’s original sketches to establish a new path to bubble wrap Pointillism. The artist highlights certain idiosyncratic aspects of what at first glance appears to be an average day along the River Seine. Moments of innuendo play out underneath the hard shadow of late afternoon; a woman walks a monkey on a leash, another fishes in the river. Despite the immense gathering, there is a sense of silence and isolation as the subjects remain aloof and unengaged with each other. Bradley Hart protects the underlying quietness that saturates the vivid landscape by encasing the scene in bubble wrap.