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Artist(s): Mark Bradford (Los Angeles, CA, November 20, 1961 - )
Title: Crossing the Threshold
Date: 2009
Dimensions: 48 in. x 60 in. (121.92 cm x 152.4 cm)
Medium: Mixed media collage on canvas
Credit Line: Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, Museum purchase with support of the African American Art Acquisition Fund, 2009.80

This object is a member of the following groups (click any group name to view all objects in that group):

Exhibitions: 4 x 4
Exhibitions: Learning to Look: The Addison at 90
Themes: MLC Portfolio: Visualizing Music
Themes: MLC Portfolio: Visualizing Poetry

Object Information

Mark Bradford scavenges materials all of which have in the artist’s words, a “built-in history,” from the streets near his studio in South Central Los Angeles to integrate into mixed-media works on canvas that are rich in texture and visual complexity. These large-scale, abstract collages are assembled out of bits of billboards, handmade advertisements, foil, string, and permanent wave end-papers from beauty shops arranged, layered, singed, sanded, and bleached into brilliantly hued and dynamic painterly compositions that seem to sprawl and swirl. Loosely gridded and often map-like, these “paintings” reference the artist’s interest in the formal traditions of modernist abstraction as well as the urban communities from which he excavates his materials.

One of the Addison’s recent acquisitions, <i>Crossing the Threshold</i> is part of a series of “white” paintings with titles drawn from a book the artist read about hidden messages contained in the Sistine Chapel that have the supposed power to unlock the mysteries of the universe. In a similar way, the densely layered color, text, and imagery lying beneath the mostly white surface of these abstract paintings offer the viewer glimpses into a mysterious subtext of alternate and parallel realities.

Allison Kemmerer
Curator of Photography and Contemporary Art

Exhibition History

This object was included in the following exhibitions:

Mark Bradford: You're Nobody (Til Somebody Kills You), Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio State University, 5/7/2010 - 9/30/2011
Inside, Outside, Upstairs, Downstairs: The Addison Anew, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/7/2010 - 3/27/2011
80 @ 80 , Addison Gallery of American Art, 10/15/2011 - 12/31/2011
Exterior Spaces, Interior Places, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/2/2014 - 1/4/2015
Heaven and Earth, Addison Gallery of American Art, 2/7/2015 - 4/5/2015
Eye on the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/1/2016 - 3/19/2017
Eye on the Collection, Addison Gallery of American Art, 4/1/2017 - 7/30/2017
4 x 4, Addison Gallery of American Art, 9/1/2018 - 7/31/2019
Learning to Look: The Addison at 90, Addison Gallery of American Art, 5/8/2021 - 2/6/2022

Your current search criteria is: [Object]Accession Number is "2009.80"