Mark Bradford

Mark Bradford is an artist that transforms scavenged materials into wall-size collages and installations that respond to the impromptu networks-underground economies, migrant communities, or popular appropriation of abandoned public space-that emerge within a city. Drawing from the diverse cultural and geographic makeup of his Southern Californian community, Bradford's work is as informed by his personal background as a third-generation merchant there as it is by the tradition of abstract painting developed worldwide in the twentieth century. Bradford's videos and map-like, multilayered paper collages refer not only to the organization of streets and buildings in downtown Los Angeles, but also to images of crowds, ranging from civil rights demonstrations of the 1960s to contemporary protests concerning immigration issues. He has been presented with the US Department of State's Medal of Arts; elected as a National Academician by the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts in New York, and he is a MacArthur Fellow (2009).