Joe Bradley was born on 1975 currently lives and Works in New York. Joe Bradley’s work reconfigures the daunting spectrum of minimalist painting with an endearing sense of humility and pathos. Arranging his canvases in the shapes of absurd and clunky figures, Bradley subverts the subtle grids of Ad Reinhardt and the pantone hued planes of Ellsworth Kelly, infusing traditional formalism with cartoon humour. Through this merger of abstraction and figuration, Bradley embraces equally the non-objective ideals of 70s art and a contemporary humanist approach to high culture.

Executed on cheap pre-fab canvases, and painted with intentional mediocrity, Bradley’s paintings are immediately sympathetic in their impoverished aesthetic. Towering with a commanding primitivism – alluding to both totems and obsolete computer graphics – Bradley’s works transact on the transcendent spiritualism of monochrome painting, instead offering an unnerving contemplation of unabashed dumbness.

In championing the abject, Bradley engages with the problems of painting itself. Each arrangement reveals the processes of theatricality and illusion, creating a sense of narrative and personal gesture through generic attributes of colour, line, shape, and composition. Behind their tongue in cheek parody, Bradley’s paintings resolve the detachment of hard edged abstraction with an affectionate intimacy; each work commands mediation through its understated integrity.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2006

• Kurgan Waves, CANADA, New York
• PS 1 Contemporary Art, Long Island City

2003

• Project Room, Kenny Schachter, Contemporary, New York

2002

• New Paintings, Allston Skirt Gallery, Boston

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2006

• Mangoes, Peres Projects, Los Angeles
• AXIS OF PRAXIS, Midway Contermporary Art, Minneapolis
• (CANA)RICO?, Galeria Comercial, San Juan, Puerto Rico
• Searching for Love and Fire, David Castillo Modern & Contemporary Art, Miami

2005

• New York’s Finest, CANADA, New York

2004

• Under the Sun, Greener Pastures Gallery, Toronto

2003

• Joy to the Max, collaborative installation with Eunice Kim, atm gallery, New York
• No Platform, Just a Trampoline, curated by Nate Lowman, Marcus Ritter Gallery, New York
• Art Band, curated by Kenny Schachter, Capitale, New York
• Gone Fishin’, Allston Skirt, Boston
• What’s Growing in Your Garden, atm gallery, New York

2002

• Friends and Family, Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York

2000

• Here Comes Rhodey, curated by Dike Blair, Allston Skirt Gallery, Boston

Conclusions:
Joe Bradley’s work reconfigures the daunting spectrum of minimalist painting with an endearing sense of humility and pathos. Arranging his canvases in the shapes of absurd and clunky figures, Bradley subverts the subtle grids of Ad Reinhardt and the pantone hued planes of Ellsworth Kelly, infusing traditional formalism with cartoon humour.

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