Biography

Joe Bradley is a contemporary American painter. In an eclectic studio practice, he explores notions of taste and skill though works often painted on commercial canvases, fluctuating between Twombly-esque scribbles, kitschy iconography, and hard-edge geometric abstraction. In one of his earliest and best-known series, Bradley created anthropomorphized shaped canvases, which recall the work of Ellsworth Kelly or Blinky Palermo and resembles running figures. His approach is both playful and irreverent, wherein he often paints flat on the floor, and welcomes—even cultivates—accidental marks and the picking up of paint, dirt, and various other elements in the work. Born in Kittery, ME in 1975, he went on to receive his BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1999 and quickly skyrocketed to art world stardom. Bradley has found critical and commercial success, including representation by prominent New York galleries such as Canada, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, and the blue-chip Gagosian. He has been the subject of a multitude of high-profile exhibitions, including his participation in the 2014 exhibition, “The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World,” at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.