Inside the Exhibit: Mark Bradford - Tears of a Tree

By any measure, celebrated Los Angeles artist Mark Bradford enjoyed a fantastic 2014. Since the fall, his sculpture ‘Bell Tower’ has hung suspended at Los Angeles International Airport, and he was featured at the Hammer Museum alongside folk legend Joni Mitchell. Commissioned by the Rockbund Art Museum, Bradford debuts his newest works with Tears of a Tree, inspired by his past visit to Shanghai.

“I like to get out of the US. It’s exciting to go somewhere and have a dialogue. When you experience a place and its people, it becomes part of your conversation,” he says. “The world’s big, but the thing is, the people in that world party with each other.”

'Tears of a Tree'

Sitting at the top floor of the Rockbund on the day before Tears of a Tree’s opening, the 53-year-old is unfailingly polite. He frequently jokes about his height – a source of stares from local children. He credits his artistic choices to curiosity and disarmingly admits, “the work is confident, but I’m not.”

It’s a strange statement from someone who will receive a Medal of Arts from the Department of State. Since taking part in the breakthrough 2001 Freestyle exhibition of African American artists in Harlem, Bradford has caught the art world’s eye with his colorful collages made from layers upon layers of paper.

'Falling Horse'

Installations like 2008’s ‘Mithra,’ a 22-foot-high, 64-foot-long ark constructed out of plywood salvaged from New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward and debuted after Hurricane Katrina, highlight the social undertones of his work.

“Art history and more abstract works look at the deep feelings inside. I look out to the way we connect and don’t connect,” he explains. “The abstraction is an art conversation, but the materials are a class/political conversation. The paper has to do with people, labor and class.”

'Lazy Mountain'

Invited to Shanghai a year and a half ago, Bradford admits all his previous knowledge came from Hollywood movies, laughing at the Orientalist stereotypes of fare like The Lady of Shanghai. Over the course of a week, he visited the city’s different neighborhoods and found inspiration at the Confucius Temple, where he came across several old maps of the city throughout different periods.

“Shanghai is Shanghai. It has completely absorbed all of its recent histories and it demands that you see all the layers and acknowledge their presence,” he explains, drawing parallels to the multicultural South Los Angeles where he grew up.

Taking the maps home, he spent a year crafting this exhibition. 12-meter-long paintings take up each of the museum’s first three floors and his new sculpture series The Loop of Deep Waters hang suspended from the fifth floor.

'Tears of a Tree'

He credits agricultural maps and trips to Shanghai’s new suburbs for ‘Tears of a Tree.’ He explains, “It reminds me of what happens when we tear down farmlands and push farmers into the city.”

A map of the former French Concession’s early street grid inspired ‘Falling Horses.’ Noting that “the West really makes everything gridded because it has to do with power.” Bradford adds, “The work comes out of that conversation on colonialism, Chinese society and the British studying Chinese. It’s about power and its complexity.”

'Falling Horse'

That interest in the city’s complex relationship with foreign nations pervades The Loop of Deep Waters. Made from plastic buoys that have been covered with paper-mâché, Bradford retraced lines of trade routes taken from maritime-era maps, repeating them and transforming them into abstract shapes.

“I was thinking about the ports and their relationship to trade and commerce,” he says. “The Huangpu River has been used for centuries to bring people together, to exploit, to colonize and to steal. It has a very complex history.”

'The Loop of Deep Waters No. 1 and No. 9'

Most striking is the third-floor painting ‘Lazy Mountain’. What appears as a modern interpretation of a Chinese landscape actually began as a happy accident. Bradford admits it has little to do with China and more a testament to process.

“I was using this inky paper and made a mistake. I pulled it off and liked the way it stained, and decided to go down this route,” he says. “I studied calligraphy as a kid and liked that you have very little room to make a mistake. I would love to say it’s based on the Chinese brushstroke, but it just ended up being like that.”

'Lazy Mountain'

To further connect the show with Shanghai, Bradford requested that the Rockbund strip back its architecture and expose its windows. It’s a nod to the building’s past as the museum for the Royal Asiatic Society and its location near the Bund waterfront.

“The relationship between architecture and art is so intimate,” he says. “It imposes on the art and becomes part of the work.”

// Until May 3 (Tues-Sun), 10am-6pm, RMB30. Rockbund Art Museum.