Katherine Bradford: Divers and Dreamers
April 22–June 3, 2016

Adams and Ollman is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new work by Katherine Bradford opening with a reception with the artist on Friday, April 22 and on view through June 3.

On view will be new paintings by Bradford that poetically merge abstraction and figuration and further her interests in the materiality of paint and its capacity to describe the complexities and nuances of narrative and emotion. Bradford's paintings, often containing incongruous information and shifting space, become a place of introspection.

Against highly abstract passages of color that have been reworked, painted over and made dense with a history of past decisions, Bradford's symbolic swimmers and ships emerge; these are subjects that Bradford has turned to again and again over the course of her career. Conjured from unfussy, direct and intuitive marks­­a smeared line, dab of paint, or bit of color­­her iconic cast of characters are often caught in a state of ambiguity. Her divers perform a graceful backflip or maybe a belly flop. The swimmers wade, seek, tread or float and often their bodies are barely differentiated from the water that surrounds them; in this way, her bodies in water remind us that we are subject to forces much larger than ourselves, such as tides caused by the attraction of the sun and the moon. The water that appears throughout the work suggests something spiritual, a powerful force that is both ominous and life affirming.

In one work, Water Nurses, six figures, and perhaps the ghosts of a few more, stand ready in a dreamy infinity pool set against the night sky. In Superman and Acolytes, the protagonist of the painting hovers awkwardly above bright white orbs seemingly in awe and wading in a green luminous water.

Bradford's resolutely innovative works explore a range of subjects, both specific and universal, and capture the complexity of feeling, thought and emotion that is the human experience.

Katherine Bradford lives and works in New York and Maine. Her works have been exhibited at MoMA PS1, New York; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Portland Museum of Art, Maine; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Massachusetts; the Weatherspoon Gallery, North Carolina; and the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. She has been honored with an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pollock­Krasner Foundation Grant, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work is in the permanent collections of New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the New York Public Library; the Wooster Art Museum, Ohio; the Portland Museum of Art, Maine; Farnsworth Museum, Maine; Smith College Museum, Massachusetts; Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; and the University of Delaware.

installation views: Divers and Dreamers


installation views: Divers and Dreamers


installation views: Divers and Dreamers


installation views: Divers and Dreamers


installation views: Divers and Dreamers


Katherine Bradford
Couple on the Moon, 2016
acrylic on canvas
44 x 36 inches
KBrad 61


Katherine Bradford
Shell Seeker, 2016
acrylic on canvas
20 x 16 inches
KBrad 56


Katherine Bradford
Superman and Acolytes, 2016
acrylic on canvas
36 x 36 inches
KBrad 55


Katherine Bradford
Waders Under Stars, 2016
acrylic on canvas
20 x 16 inches
KBrad 53


Katherine Bradford
Three Swimmer Pool, 2016
acrylic on canvas
21 x 24 inches
KBrad 71