Waiting For Superman

Mark Bradford is more myth than man, vaunted to superhero status by the powers of the art world. But the only man of steel he’s interested in, finds Christina KO, is the fallen idol.

- Christina KO

MARK BRADFORD LIKES to think big. He likes to read big books. He likes to make big art pieces. He has big ideas, and he executes them in a big studio in South Los Angeles.

But right now, Bradford is thinking as small as a single panel in a comic book. We’re standing in front of a big unfinished painting in his big studio, which has been made from layering paint and pages torn from comic books, and watching as he purposefully rubs out the figure of a classic comic-book trope using the pad of his right thumb.

Paper has always formed the base of Bradford’s work, from back when he was straddling the line between artist and full-time hairdresser, tacking endpapers used for hair perms onto canvas, staining them with hair dye and paint and calling it art. He’s also used billboard papers in the past, but his latest material fascination is with graphic novels. These form the base of the works he’s finishing up for two shows in LA and Hong Kong with his gallery, Hauser & Wirth, debuting in February and March respectively.

“It’s all about where myth and urban setting meet through superheroes. It’s dystopian — like Gotham, in a weird way. I feel like the world at the moment, it’s just gone so loopy. So why not go to something that is all about that? The graphic novel part is so dramatic and densely saturated with colour, and with mythology. Help us, Superman!” He pauses.