I nspired by merchant posters pulled from the streets of inner-city Los Angeles, Mark Bradford’s The Father’s “NO” is a compelling example of the artist’s thickly layered artworks that.mes rge art, urban life and social practice. Bradford’s labor intensive and process-oriented works that address t.mes ly and urgent social and political issues, have earned him a reputation as one of the most important American artists working today.
In the mid-2000s Bradford expanded the focus of his work to examine the broader economic and racial geography of the communities in which he lived. The present work is part of a series of “merchant posters” that he has explored on-and-off again since 2006, and are inspired by advertisements hung and pasted informally around inner-city areas, including the Leimert Park neighborhood where the artist grew up. In these works, layers of billboard paper, collage and paint have been sanded down until they reveal just fragments of the original phrases. These works are displayed singly or in groups to resemble the sites where these ads would typically be found within urban environments. The texts, which offer services such as DNA testing, payday loans or help with immigration papers, primarily target people in t.mes s of personal or economic crisis and provides a window into the challenges facing urban communities.
“The sheer density of advertising creates a psychic mass, an overlay that can somet.mes s be very tense or aggressive”
Featuring a text advertising a hotline for fathers to gain custody of their children, the work reads “Fathers, do you want child custody? Divorce, visitation. 866 -72, Daddy.” Repeated six t.mes s, each rendered in different colors and different applications of acrylic, felt-tip pen and collage, the surfaces are concealed by layers of acrylic paint and heavily collaged weathered paper that Bradford extensively manipulates by repeatedly adding and removing elements. What remains are traces of the poster’s text, hovering like flickers beneath the surface. “I make the text less readily readable [and] slightly out of focus so that the viewer is forced to look more closely.” (Mark Bradford, correspondence with Christopher Bedford, November 2009).
By heavily working the surfaces of the posters and extensively reimagining their content and imagery, Bradford pushes each image further towards abstraction and largely removes the original purpose of advertising a service. Through the artist’s extensive intervention, the poster’s previous utility partially disintegrates to leave behind just remnants of its message in the background, heavily disguised, but still present. Through the artist’s intervention, he recontextualizes the image as a Replica Handbags object.
