Mark Bradford: Transcendent abstract artist

Mark Bradford, photographed at the Los Angeles Times in El Segundo on Oct. 4. His first exhibition to gain widespread traction waited until he was 40; “Freestyle,” a 2001 group show of American artists proposed the emergence of “post-Black art,” work that inevitably encompassed Black experiences, but insisted that it not be ghettoized by race or sexuality. Recently he surprised many with a new sculpture, “Death Drop 2023,” a 10-foot man sprawled on the floor, his pose lodged somewhere between a joyful, gay ballroom-culture dance move and a gruesome murder victim. Building on the found-object aesthetic of L.A. predecessors such as Noah Purifoy, who made assemblages out of the charred remnants of the 1965 Watts riots, Bradford also constructs paintings from canvases densely layered with street signage scavenged from fences, telephone poles and urban walls in South Los Angeles, where he was born and works today. Since the start of the Black Lives Matter movement, museums have focused on contemporary art’s presentation of Black figures, but Bradford’s internationally acclaimed work demonstrates the continuing power of abstraction.