Katherine Bradford at Galleria Monica De Cardenas, Milan, Italy, June 8–July 28, 2017




We are pleased to announce the first exhibition in Italy by American painter Katherine Bradford. Bradford’s recent paintings are depictions of water and swimmers, both playful and profound. Painting and swimming share immersion and a certain loss of control that is simultaneously wild and structured. The body in nature; we see ourselves situated in relationship to the deep other.

Bradford’s swimmers are not lit from some external light source but seem to generate their own brightness. The world seems milky and dreamlike. This comes from the act of painting, the painter breathing light and life into her canvasses. Bradford spends months and sometimes years building up the surfaces of her paintings, slowly changing the paintings through repeated application of thinned out acrylic paint or scuffed on thicker stuff: this gradual activity creates animation and a floating quality.

Bradford often refers to the humor in her paintings. In the past the subject matter pointed more obviously in this direction: UFOs with tractor beams, Superman, Skinny boxers with raised gloves and lonesome ocean liners were used to create a self-depreciating painterly pop encyclopedia. Her recent work holds pathos and humor in equal measure.

One reason her paintings have become more and more relatable is that even as she depicts specific motifs, she relentlessly touches on the biggest themes and forces us to confront them – fear, wonder, vulnerability, hubris, and joy. In her newest work, she even more deliberately sets her scenes in larger, planetary landscape-stages. The characters are moving along the surface of the earth, and between underworlds and outer space. The paintings suggest rapture in all senses of the word – enchantment and bliss, as well as imminent demise.








Installation views of Katherine Bradford at Galleria De Cardenas, Milan Italy, June 8–July 28, 2017.