Buffalo, NY – On Saturday, June 24, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery will open the first large-scale museum exhibition in North America devoted to the work of celebrated artist Joe Bradley (American, born 1975). On Friday, June 23, a Members’ Opening will take place from 5 to 7 pm, with a free Public Opening to follow from 7 to 9 pm. At 7:15 pm in the Auditorium, the museum will present Voices in Contemporary Art: Artists in Conversation, with Joe Bradley and Senior Curator Cathleen Chaffee.

“The Albright-Knox’s collection was in large part shaped by a strategy of acquiring significant works by artists early in their careers and also working with early and mid-career artists to organize their first major monographic exhibitions in the United States, including that of Clyfford Still in 1959, as well as many more in recent years,” said Peggy Pierce Elfvin Director Janne Sirén. “The museum is proud of this legacy and is committed to creating opportunities for both its local community and the global audience of scholars to experience such early in-depth presentations of an artist’s body of work. We are thrilled to present this, Joe Bradley’s first North American survey exhibition which celebrates this brilliant artist’s diverse and virtuosic bodies of work, created over the past decade.”

Joe Bradley, widely known for his powerful abstract paintings and spontaneous drawings, has distinguished himself among the artists of his generation with his mutable approach to artmaking. This mid-career survey exhibition places Bradley’s abstractions in context alongside his other diverse bodies of work.

With minimal fuss, Bradley works in series, pivoting between abstraction and figuration, the earnest and the comic. This exhibition shows his movement from subtly figurative modular Color Field paintings to grease-pencil drawings on canvas, then to densely layered expressionistic abstract canvases that record the detritus and spontaneity of the studio environment, and silkscreen paintings based on the found images—from underground comics to outdated periodicals—that so often inspire his work.

These nearly thirty paintings are joined by dozens of quickly sketched and immediately engaging drawings and a group of figurative bronzes based on found amateur sculpture. Together, the works incorporate most major series from Bradley’s career over the past decade. This exhibition is the first to contextualize Bradley’s different bodies of work in abstraction, figuration, and assemblage, and is the first time viewers will be able to perceive the complexity and richness of his unique take on abstraction and the evolutions of style.

Joe Bradley has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, including a solo museum exhibition at Le Consortium, Dijon, in 2014, and group exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; MoMA P.S.1, Queens, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, Germany. Bradley was raised in Maine and pursued his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design.

After its presentation at the Albright-Knox, the exhibition will travel to the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring essays on Bradley’s painting and drawing, and a new interview between Bradley and artist Carroll Dunham.

Joe Bradley is organized by Senior Curator Cathleen Chaffee. It will remain on view until Sunday, October 1, 2017. 

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