Dove Bradshaw

Dove Bradshaw (USA) has been associated with Stalke Galleri since the late 1980s and has, over four decades, played a defining role in shaping the gallery’s profile and experimental direction. Bradshaw’s practice engages material change, the passage of time, and the interplay between science and perception, where the work often evolves according to its own conditions.

The collaboration between Bradshaw and Stalke has resulted in more than 20 prints published by the gallery, produced primarily at Niels Borch Jensen Editions and, on occasion, Edition Copenhagen. Here, printmaking is not approached as reproduction, but as an extension of her ongoing investigations into natural forces, occurrence, and image formation.

Bradshaw has presented a series of solo exhibitions at Stalke up to the present, and her work remains a central point of reference within the gallery’s history and development. This catalogue presents the complete set of prints created through this long-standing collaboration.

I AM MYSELF HEAVEN AND HELL, 2011

A honey locust thorn was balanced on the back of the model Kerry Kozokas allowing it to fall down her spine.The image was shot with 4 x 5 film in 2008 and made into a silver gelatin print with the assistance of Paul Taylor, Renaissance Press, New Hampshire. Renaissance Press first published a black and white edition of 36 with the image rotated horizontally.This photogravure edition of 36 is split: one printed blue, the other black, signed, dated 2011, and titled on recto, 211⁄2 x 181⁄4 inches.

SPENT BULLETS, 1999

In 1979 a .38 caliber lead slug was cast in silver, crimped into a cartridge, then shot and retrieved by the artist at a NewYork City Police Department firing range. As a political statement another “spent” lead bullet was cast in silver and made into a pair of earrings.They were photographed along with an intact NYPD bullet in 1999 with 21⁄4 x 21⁄4 inch film.This photogravure edition of 30 is signed, dated, and titled on recto, 183⁄4 x 13 inches.

YOU SKULL SEE, 2008

This self-portrait holding a skull to a mirror derives its title from finnegans Wake. It was photograph- ed with 4 x 5 film in 2004.The photogravure edition of 36 is split: one printed blue, the other black, signed, dated 2004/2008, and titled on recto, 28 x 211⁄2 inches.

PLAIN AIR, 2005

The artist photographed a pair of flight pigeons mating on a target in her 1991 installation of
Plain Air at PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, NewYork.The installation recreates the 1969
original in which two mourning doves were released in the artist’s studio with a suspended 27 inch bicycle wheel. Respecting the larger museum space the components were doubled in scale and number — the pigeons increased to two pairs, the bicycle wheels doubled becoming 48 inches in diameter, along with two targets and two nests.The title is a pun. Photo-gravure edition of 36, is signed, dated 2005, and titled on face, 17 7/8 x 21 inches.

LIGHTNESS OG BEING, 2008

This self-portrait was taken on a 17th Chinese hunting chair in the artist’s studio. It was photographed with 4 x 5 film in 2004. This photogravure edition of 36 is split: one printed blue, the other black, signed, dated 2004/2008, and titled on recto, 28 x 211⁄2 inches.

(A)CLAIMED OBJECT, 2005

In 1979 the artist ‘claimed’ a hygrothermograph in the Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf (the second of three such objects ‘claimed’ in museums). Her focus on this meteorological instrument was a harbinger of her paintings whose chemically treated surfaces cause them to change with the atmosphere.The image was shot in 1979 with 35mm film.This photogravure edition of 36 is signed, dated 2005, and titled on recto, 151⁄2 x 103⁄4 inches.

2√0 [horizontal], 2005
In 1971 Bradshaw created this glass and acetone sculpture (21⁄2 x 6 x 21⁄2 inches) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.When vertical it is an unpredictable timepiece, when horizontal an unmarked level. She has referred to its variable nature as pataphysical. Alfred Jarry’s pataphysics is the science of the particular or of laws that govern exceptions.The title is a nonsense mathematical formula. In 2004 a 4 x 5 Daguerreotype was made, then scanned and used to make this photogravure.The photogravure edition of 36 is signed, dated 2005, and titled on recto, 17 7/8 x 21 inches.

2√0 [vertical], 2008
Photographed with 4 x 5 film in 2007 as a timer, it was then printed as a negative for this photogravure in order to pair with its portrayal as a level.The photogravure edition of 36 is signed, dated 2005, and titled on recto, 17 7/8 x 21 inches.

WITHOUT TITlLE, 2000

The artist is known for her chemical paintings and outdoor sculptures of stone, minerals, and metal that change in weather. Here acid was thrown onto a copper plate, then printed.This acquatint edition of 26 is signed and dated 2000 on recto, the first: 191⁄2 x 15 inches; the second and third: 19 x 123⁄4 inches.

PERFORMANCE, BURN, 2011

In 1978 the fire hose at the Northwest corner of the Great Hall Balcony,The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NewYork, was photographed with 35mm film, then made into a silver gelatin print.This photogra- vure edition of 36 is signed, dated 1976/2011 and titled on recto, 211⁄2 x 181⁄4 inches.

In 1976 Bradshaw affixed a label next to a standard fire hose at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
in NewYork identifying it as her work. She dubbed it a ‘claimed’ object in recognition of its à priori presence, distinguishing it from an objet trouvé. On regular visits to the museum whenever the label had been removed, she would replace it.Two years later finding it still there, she printed an edition
of postcards, slipping fifty at a time into the museum’s twentieth-century postcard racks. Knowing the card was not theirs, nonetheless it sold for years.The silver gelatin print aquired by the Department of Photography in 1980 became an official postcard in 1992. Eleven years later Bradshaw retitled the work performance to account for all this activity, including the acquisition committee’s meetings, and, perhaps, even a fire should there be one. In 2007 the fire hose itself was accepted into the museum’s permanent collection as a work of art. In 2012 Roselind Jacobs, the donor and a Dadaist collector, received a letter from the chairman of 19th-Century, Modern and Contemporary Art stating that the museum was

now working on an official label with this caveat:“I do feel bound to acknowledge that although Ms. Bradshaw claimed the fire hose, we are not obliged to exhibit her work continously.”The artist believes the circle will be completed by the mounting of a permanent label.This history offers Bradshaw’s guerilla alternative to traditional ownership. In a published conversation with art historian,Thomas McEvilley, John Cage noted,“Marcel Duchamp said, speaking of Utopia, that we won’t be able to reach it till

we give up the notion of possession. And this work of Dove’s confronts possession completely.” For the 2011 photogravure edition, she burned a hole in each print.

THEY WERE AND WENT, 2008

In 2004 a 4 x 5 daguerreotype of a skull and a broken goose eggshell was taken and later scanned to make this print. Its title came from finnegans Wake. This photogravure edition of 36 is signed, dated 2008, and titled on recto, 17 7/8 x 21 inches. Later the two halves of the eggshell were cast into gold and the work was titled Nothing.

COUNTERFEIT BIll, 2005

William Anastasi, the artist’s life-partner since 1974, supplants Benjamin Franklin on a one hundred- dollar bill.Anastasi’s image was derived from a 4 x 5 daguerreotype self-portrait taken in 2002.The title of this work comes from an off-hand self-deprecating remark by Anastasi.This photogravure edition of 36 is signed, dated 2005, and titled on recto, 151⁄2 x 103⁄4 inches.

SONG Of WHICH [Evelina Looking Left], 2011

The body elements are printed on voile in descending order by weight with the letter ‘O’ representing oxygen.The model again is Evelina Domnitch photographed with 21⁄4 x 21⁄4 inch film in 2004. This photogravure edition of 36 is signed, dated 2011, and titled on recto, 211⁄2 x 181⁄4 inches.

For further information or acquisition inquiries, please contact Sam Jedig / Stalke Galleri.