'Katherine Bradford: Sky Swimmers' opens at Kunsthalle Emden
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Thursday, November 7, 2024


'Katherine Bradford: Sky Swimmers' opens at Kunsthalle Emden
Katherine Bradford, Mid Summer Lake, 2018, Acryl auf Leinwand, 22,86 x 30,48 cm. Doris Mampe, courtesy Haverkampf Leistenschneider, Berlin © Katherine Bradford. Photo: Jens Ziehe, Berlin.



EMDEN.- With Katherine Bradford: Sky Swimmers, Kunsthalle Emden is one of the first European institutions to present a solo exhibition of the American artist. Katherine Bradford (b. 1942) creates works that are characterized by a blend of figuration and abstraction along with a vibrant, contemporary color palette; her recurring motifs of swimmers, supermen, and acrobats populate the canvases in mystical, surreal scenes, and are the focus of the exhibition in Emden. These anonymous figures—some truncated, some whole—appear ghostly and other-worldly. Strong painterly reduction breaks them down to the essentials: devoid of faces, characteristic body features, or gender classification, the figures seem mysterious and masked. They are depicted in suspended states, in which both the before and the after are ambiguous: thus, they are made a commonplace of human existence. Whether the bodies are standing, swimming, or floating, their interrelations can be read as a visual metaphor for social relationships such as community and isolation, vulnerability and strength, and activity and passivity.

For the artist, it makes no difference whether the figures are arranged in water or against the sky: “I think I’m attracted to the sky, the ocean, and outer space, because you can tip it in all of those directions pretty easily. You can slide from the ocean right into outer space.” A brushstroke can change the dynamics of the painting; a shade of color can alter the reference space. In her highly intuitive painting style, in which memory, idea and imagination intermingle, the artist models the figures out of the background. To Bradford, paint is not so much material as matter. This is particularly evident when one is looking for the source of light: The figures seem to glow from within.

Katherine Bradford (b. 1942) belongs to an older generation of female artists whose lives have been strongly affected by heteronormative ideas of family: “The effort I had to make to turn my life around so that I could be an artist, a real artist, was a hundred times harder than becoming a gay person. Being a lesbian was a lateral transfer. I think when I was young, I didn’t have the imagination to be a lesbian.” She was born in New York and grew up in Connecticut. After earning a bachelor’s degree in art history at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania, she settled in Maine with her husband and had twins. There she joined a group of free spirits, artists, and poets and began actively exploring painting for the first time. After her divorce, at the age of 37, Katherine Bradford moved to New York City with her twins to devote herself entirely to art. There, she soon made contact with other artists, completed an MFA at New York State University, and met her long-term partner. It was not until the 2000s that she began to gain recognition as an artist, with her breakthrough coming in 2016—at the age of 74.

Her works are included in the collections of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Dallas Museum of Art; the Menil Collection, Houston, and the Portland Museum of Art, among others.

Curator: Lisa Felicitas Mattheis (artistic director)










Today's News

September 9, 2024

Nicole Eisenman at the tipping point

Parrish Art Museum receives Bank of America grant to support conservation of historic William Merritt Chase painting

Street artist documents war in Ukraine, one stark mural at a time

Asia Week New York Autumn 2024, returns with a vibrant array of gallery exhibitions and auctions from September 12-20

Naudline Pierre's second solo exhibition with James Cohan opens in New York

New book celebrates the centenary of the death of Belgium's leading impressionist

Yinka Ilori makes his mark at Sotheby's

CLAMP opens "Doris Mitsch │ Locked Down Looking Up"

Flawless Type IIa diamond, designer jewels by Van Cleef & Arpels, Tiffany & Co., Cartier and more lead Heritage sale

Galerie Guido W. Baudach to open 'Jasmin Werner: Remote Control'

Zohar Fraiman has a new solo exhibition at Städtische Galerie im Park Viersen in Germany

Lisa Williamson's third solo exhibition with Tanya Bonakdar Gallery opens in Los Angeles

LAUNCH Gallery will open an exhibition of figurative drawings and paintings by Curt LeMieux and Marley Van Peebles

Off-white after Virgil Abloh

Calla Henkel and Max Pitegoff's 'THEATER' will open at FLUENTUM, Berlin

40 years later, does 'Bright Lights, Big City' still resonate?

For him, a 'Lion King' prequel is the 'most different thing I could do'

'Katherine Bradford: Sky Swimmers' opens at Kunsthalle Emden

Read your way through Buenos Aires

Giorgio Andreotta Calò's first solo exhibition at Annet Gelink Gallery will open in Amsterdam

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County presents 'Reframing Dioramas: The Art of Preserving Wilderness'

Exhibition of Roy Thurston's sculptural color fields on view at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College

Bortolami opens its second solo exhibition by Deborah Remington

Exhibition features works on paper and large-scale mixed-media paintings by Dewey Crumpler

How much CBN oil should I take at Night?

Master the Art of Driving: Why G1 Practice Matters

From Function to Fashion: How Custom Mouse Pads Enhance Your Workspace

How Can You Take Advantage of the Heat Pump Rebate in Victoria?

The Road Less Traveled: Exploring Part-Time Grad School Options




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Attorneys
Truck Accident Attorneys
Accident Attorneys
Holistic Dentist
Abogado de accidentes
สล็อต
สล็อตเว็บตรง

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site Parroquia Natividad del Señor
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful