The Power of Abstract Figuration (ENGLISCH)

In her enigmatic figurative compositions and vibrant fields of color, Katherine Bradford skillfully blends the traditions of abstraction and color-field painting with contemporary questions of identity and gender.

By embedding her abstract, often androgynous figures in dreamlike and otherworldly settings, she delves, as she puts it, into the depths of “who we are, how we fit in, what we look like, and how we interact with one another.” Join Bradford and Chloe Stead, editor of frieze, in conversation about the artist’s longstanding interest in the tensions between intimacy, isolation, empathy, and dependency, as well as her exhibition “ALLTAG” at Haverkampf Leistenschneider, where a new series of paintings explores the contrasting states of weightlessness and the pull of gravity.

In her luminous color-field paintings, Katherine Bradford (born 1942 in New York) frequently depicts motifs such as floating figures, swimmers, flying superheroes, couples, and men in suits, surrounded by planets, houses, and beaches. These figures often appear vulnerable, awkward, and exposed. Bradford’s paintings draw their atmospheric, metaphorical power from a playful engagement with emotion and humor. Bradford has had solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Kunsthalle Emden, Germany; the Halle für Kunst Steiermark, Austria; the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; the Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Oregon; and the Modern Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, to name just a few. Her works are held in public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris; the Baltimore Museum, Maryland; and the Kunsthalle Emden, Germany.

Chloe Stead is an art critic, writer, and editor based in Berlin. As an editor at frieze, she is responsible for commissioning and overseeing digital content. Her freelance articles on art and culture have appeared in publications such as the Financial Times, Spike Art Quarterly, Artnet, AnOther Magazine, and Monocle. She regularly contributes to artist monographs and has participated in or moderated discussions, for example at Damien & the Love Guru in Brussels, Vienna Contemporary, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, and the Migros Museum in Zurich.

IN ENGLISH

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