Mark Bradford strikes a pose of quiet self-reflection

Mark Bradford found his path to becoming an artist while working at his mother’s beauty salon. The Los Angeles-born artist used layers of cheap end papers (thin, delicate sheets used to protect hair from burns during perms) instead of paint in the early works that would soon earn him an international reputation, eventually would take him to the official flag of the United States. at the 2017 Venice Biennale, his most important exhibition to date.

Nearing 40 years old when Thelma Golden selected him to participate in her landmark 2001 “Freestyle” exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which featured mostly young black artists embracing abstraction and challenging the dogmas of representation, he has become become one of America’s greatest living painters. However, technically speaking, he still uses paper instead of paint as his primary medium.

In “You Don’t Have to Tell Me Twice,” Bradford’s works occupy the entirety of Hauser & Wirth’s five-story flagship in Chelsea, his first New York solo show since 2015, showcasing a dozen paintings along with two works setting the mood, a sculpture and video piece that finds the artist taking stock and evaluating his own meteoric rise.

There are no major revelations in the dozen or so large-scale paintings done in Bradford’s distinctive mode incorporating found paper. There are no bugs either. As grand and impressive as ever, he has refined his method of working, which manages to fuse the history of general abstraction, from Jackson Pollock to Gerhard Richter, with the paper he often draws from his surroundings, replicating the familiar visual effect of worn paper. and worn. exposed layers of wheat-pasted billboards or billboards marking city streets.

Throughout the gallery building muted tones and silver metallics dominate. In “Johnny the Jaguar” (2023), the toothy head of the titular big cat is discernible in a chaotic expanse that looks like a worn, tangled tapestry with only a legible fragment of its original composition.

The towering assembly of “Manifest Destiny” (2023) reads “Johnny Buys Houses” in bold white capitals and evokes the specter of gentrification. Bradford’s works often include signs and advertisements ripped from the walls and fences of public space. Here, the artwork’s flashes of color come in part from the remains of a poster announcing a Foo Fighters concert.

Though it occupies the entire building, the display of just 14 works feels intimate, even modest. The 12 paintings (10 from 2023, two from 2021) are joined by the two atypical works, both titled “Death Drop”, both a kind of self-portraits that capture the artist looking in the mirror, setting a tone of tranquility. -reflection that floods the entire show.

The first, “Death Drop, 1973” (1973), a newer video work that the artist has dated for his Super-8 film source, captures a quick moment of a young Bradford standing by a fence in a backyard. playground or park, performing a dramatic drop for the camera. But digitized loop editing slows down this fall drastically.

Bradford’s long figure, slender even in a red puffer jacket, arches in a parabolic collapse as her blue-jeaned hips swing and plunge toward the fence, only to snap back up before hitting the ground. She rises until her hands ballet up above her head, only to then collapse back down once more, spinning endlessly in 20-second cycles.

The hypnotic repetition draws attention to fringe aspects of the video, such as the menacing shadow of a snarling dog on the other side of the fence or the nonchalant white man seemingly engrossed in a game of handball in the background. A moment in the remembered urban public space, a child fooling around in front of a camera becomes choreographed.

If the preteen Bradford of the “Death Drop” video never touches the ground, the Bradford of the second “Death Drop 2023” (2023), 50 years later, appears at a glance never to leave him. The larger-than-life sculpture, stretching some 10 feet in length, depicts a slumped image of the artist prone and painted white, arms outstretched dramatically, left leg outstretched, and right leg bent sharply at the knee. knee to his side.

At first glance it looks like the result of violent felling. But the title suggests instead a dramatic moment in the dance, referring to the “drop to death” pose popularized in gay ballroom culture, when the performer falls to the floor in this position only to pick himself up and then continue dancing.

A close look at the sculpture reveals a rhythmic pattern of markings, where the figure’s surface has been worn away, borrowing a technique from his paintings, to reveal splashes of color beneath.

Decades after his established style, Bradford continues to paste and layer detritus and primary documents of life and culture onto his canvases. Here, the artist’s oversized image may spread across the floor, but Mark Bradford still stands tall: a giant.

Mark Bradford: You don’t have to tell me twice

Through July 28 at Hauser & Wirth, 542 West 22nd Street, Manhattan; 212-790-3900, hauserwirth.com.