John Bradford "Painting the Biblical Narrative"

Bowery Gallery

poster for John Bradford "Painting the Biblical Narrative"

This event has ended.

These works capture the beauty of the spare text of the Old Testament stories through a process of relentlessly reworking the entire surface of the painting with a full brush until composition and interpretation emerge as one. Leaving the impasto residues of previous layers creates a form in which, as in the Bible, gaps in representation are as important as what is visible. Simultaneously austere and lush, the paintings allow just enough of an opening behind their taut yet complex surfaces to politely invite viewers into the multifarious, raucously contradictory space of biblical exegesis.

The paintings are neither irreverent nor pious. They imply a more political intent. They celebrate the radically unadorned, disconcerting Hebrew Bible as a foundational ethos onto which we continue to cling, however precariously. About a 2007 exhibition of Mr. Bradford’s works at 55 Mercer Gallery, R.C. Baker wrote in the Village Voice, “These 14 biblical scenes, painted with a drippy, Abstract Expressionist brio, are devoid of both fundamentalist didacticism and secular snarkiness, while beautifully evoking the imperfect humanity underlying the divine.”

Media

Schedule

from November 30, 2010 to December 31, 2010

Opening Reception on 2010-12-02 from 17:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

John Bradford

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