Joe Bradley. Eric's Hair

Opening reception: Thursday, February 23, 6–8PM

Oil paint has so much life. It really behaves like it wants to behave. You’ll go into a painting with an idea of what you want to do, and forty seconds later your plan has been upended. You always have to deal with these little skirmishes on the canvas. —Joe Bradley

Gagosian is pleased to present “Eric’s Hair,” new paintings and sculpture by Joe Bradley.

Weaving cultural references and engagements with the tradition and aesthetics of paint on canvas that are both ironic and earnest, Bradley’s maverick oeuvre is built on a diverse visual language that deadpans against easy categorization.

In the new works, Bradley tempers the use of color in bold, primary swathes with approaches to form and surface that remain resolutely contingent.

This exhibition is the 2017 Gagosian Oscar show, a highly anticipated annual fixture in the Los Angeles cultural calendar where the art, film, and celebrity communities join to celebrate a key gallery artist on the Thursday evening before the Academy Awards ceremony.

Joe Bradley was born in 1975 in Kittery, Maine and lives and works in New York City. He received his BFA in 1999 from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence. Collections include Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Saatchi Gallery, London; Hall Art Foundation, Reading, VT; De la Cruz Collection, Miami; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. Recent solo exhibitions include MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY (2006); Le Consortium, Dijon, France (2014); and BOZAR, Brussels (2016–17). Bradley participated in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, and in Portugal Arte 10 (2010), as well as in group exhibitions, such as "New York Minute," MACRO Foundation, Rome (2009, traveled to Garage Center for Contemporary Art in 2011); "EXPO 1: New York," MoMA PS1 (2013); and "The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World," Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014–15).

A mid-career survey of Bradley's work is scheduled at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York in June, which will subsequently travel to the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.