BRADLEY HARMS HALBERDS ARMY
bradley harms Halberds Army
Published in conjunction with the exhibtion Bradley Harms Halberds Army Winsor Gallery September, 10th – October 10th, 2015
Imperfect Grid (open sides), hyand applied acrylic on canvas, 72 x 54”, 2015
winsor gallery
cover image: [detail] Imperfect Grid (light coloured), hand applied acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48”, 2015
Artwork images courtesy of Winsor Gallery and Bradley Harms
258 East 1st Avenue Vancouver, BC V5T 1A6 – info@winsorgallery.com winsorgallery.com
winsor gallery presents Bradley Harms : Halberds Army
Winsor Gallery is pleased to announce the second comprehensive exhibition of abstract painter, Bradley Harms in Vancouver. A leader of the Canadian abstract movement, Harms has exhibited throughout Canada, as well as on the international stage – Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Miami, Munich, Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo.
Imperfect Grid (blue/yellow), Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 54� 2015
A Statment from the Artist
“As I pay close attention to the material aspects of painting, my work certainly
“The precision of the lines, themselves, hints at technology, where the gesture
exudes a sense of technological awareness. These paintings are contemporary
repeated forms elaborate and complex systems, flipping between surface assertion
objects with seams and edges that are confident and exacted. The surfaces,
and spatial invitation. These accumulations hint at endlessness, as they exceed
painted with mechanical conviction, undoubtedly borrow from the tropes of
the viewer’s visual awareness. “What can be certain is that the work employs a
digital art and, though I enjoy the mimicry, I eschew machine techniques by
hybridization of style. It dismantles abstraction, reconfiguring it in order to create
hand applying the delicately modulated lines; trumping the manufactured
a viable and forward-looking syntax that reflects current social and technologi-
aesthetic with the hand made.
cal developments without simply mirroring them. These are perfectionist paintings that extol imperfect formal and social realms. I craft paintings that are slick
The paintings, although appearing close to the technically perfect, always fall short in that they subtly betray the human hand in their production. Invariably, The lines and marks wobble and waver. I think of this work as trying to deny the gestural mark, but never able to transcend it. This notion of striving for perfection but never really achieving it instills the work with a sense of humanity (touch) that I find gratifying metaphorically (and unavailable in a lot of contemporary media). Wherein Modernism was concerned with purity, my work could be seen as its contemporary redheaded stepchild… Quite impure!”
as well as sincere, diagrammatic as well as sensual, almost self-conscious of their identity as abstract paintings. As we move towards the world of the pixel, the world of paint becomes evermore alchemical and seductive—more viral—responding to that which seeks to obliterate it by mutating and renewing itself once again into the great “other”. Though this work, I acknowledge that painting is and will be continue to be problematic. I embrace this as opportunity. I feel a responsibility to continue parsing painting’s language; its authority, history, and affiliations.”
-Bradley Harms
Install shot of Halberd’s Army: Stacked Simple Exes and Purros
Stacked Simple Exes, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 108� 2015
Coffered Grid, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 20”, 2015
Detail: Coffered Grid ( Magenta) acrylic on canvas, 24 x 20” 2015
Coffred Grid, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 20�, 2015
“To say that there is an attitude of confidence in Brad Harms’ paintings is on understatement. Certitude of form, color and finish verges on arrogance. Still his paintings compel the viewer, beckoning us into their dialectic tension, a volley between method and imagination, structure and illusion. Combining the look of digital image-making techniques with Constructivist, DeStijl and Op Art sensibilities, Harms’ paintings advance the language of abstraction to the far side of postmodernism. They are precise and clean. They are impeccably crafted. Their format and scale sets up juxtapositions between calculated design and pictorial composition. These paradoxical moves within Harms’ fixed vocabulary of color, form, figure and ground set the stage for the conceptual underpinnings of these seductive and intelligent paintings.”
Michelle Grabner, Co-curator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial
Imperfect Grid (light coloured), hand applied acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48”, 2015
Stacked Simple Exes (Multi), hand applied acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48”, 2015
Stacked Simple Exes (Cobalt), hand applied acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48”, 2015
Purro Free Style Blk White Arcs, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16”, 2015
Purro Free Style Purple Blue Drag, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16” 2015
Purro Free Style Blue Arcs, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16”, 2015
Purro Free Style Grey White Arcs, acrylic on canvas, 20 x 16”, 2015
Purro is what Cubans call a fine cigar… It means "pure one”. Like a Cuban cigar; the hand made object becomes a new benchmark for the idea of perfection. The notion of purity is significant in the work in that the tops of the paintings are based on the reductivist purity that Modernists strove for. Both the Grid and the Monochrome were benchmarks of modernist tendencies. Ultimately, these paintings are dichotomies: the reductivist idea of purity versus a very human notion of imperfection. They are both an acknowledgment and a critique… playful in a very serious way.
Red Purro, acrylic on Canvas, 48 x 36”2015
Purros, acrylic on Canvas, 48 x 36”2015
Purros, acrylic on Canvas, 48 x 36”2015
Colour Diamond acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24” 2015 Mono Diamond acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24” 2015
Mono Diamond acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24” 2015
Various versions: Soft Grid Tiger, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40” 2015
Soft Grid Tiger, acrylic on canvas, 30 x 40” 2015
Floroscribble Yellow, pink and oragnge, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24� 2015
About Bradley Harms
Bradley Harms received his BFA from the University of Calgary in 1996 and his Masters of Fine Arts from the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. His work is included in such notable collections as: the Canada Council’s Art Bank (Ottawa ON), The Senvest Collection of New Canadian Art (Montreal, PQ), Alberta Foundation for the Art (Edmonton, AB), The Glenbow Museum (Calgary, AB), the University of Western Sydney (Sydney, Australia), the Bank of Montreal (Toronto, ON), the Nickle Arts Museum (Calgary, AB), Tama Art University (Tokyo, Japan) and the Polygon Collection (Vancouver). Harms is a 2013 winner of the Cenovus Art Award.
Hey Picasso! acrylic on canvas, 24 x 20” 2015