Guilty Marks

Dove Bradshaw

4.6 to 30.6. 1999

Press Release

Dove Bradshaw

Guilty Marks

In Stalke Galleri (project room), the American artist Dove Bradshaw will show the exhibition Guilty Marks.

The first of these paintings was done in 1995. The works in this exhibition were made in 1998 and 1999.

Dove Bradshaw began working with indeterminate processes in 1969. Only in part do these paintings commit to this approach. In an equal part, they were done with an eye to formal concerns.

On a horizontal canvas, in a wet pool of varnish, a wide variety of materials and chemicals are dropped or poured. As the varnish sets, the element of chance radically changes the composition.

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Review

Transience

The American artist Dove Bradshaw works with transience, with change. The works currently on display at Stalke Galleri are thus part of an ongoing process, consisting of a series of chemicals being poured and dripped onto the canvas. What they do to each other will be revealed over time. It is about dramatic material interactions, but also a meeting between culture and nature. Bradshaw facilitates the process, but what happens as a result lies beyond her control. Here, nature takes over.

This has been Bradshaw’s focus for many years and has garnered great attention, not least from the multimedia artist John Cage. The new works are reminiscent of Jackson Pollock's famous drip paintings from the early 1950s, not only in their execution but also in their natural transformation. However, most of all, Bradshaw’s latest studies focus on transience and the time it takes.

The image “August” (excerpt) by Dove Bradshaw comes from an earlier series of works that also deal with transience. – Catalog photo.

Politiken 18.6.1999