...Page is loading...

Slater Bradley Studio | Architecture and spatial design: Studio Miessen | Photo: Enrich Duch

Slater Bradley

Berlin, Germany

Collage, Installation, Mixed media, Painting, Photography, Sculpture, Video • Born in San Francisco, USA • Studied at University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Published 11/01/2017 | Updated 09/02/2018

Journal

Share on

ICONS of the SPIRIT

The spirit is at the centre of Slater Bradley’s work. A sense of being connected to something beyond the physical pervades and inspires the things that he creates.

Bradley’s work is fascinated with icons: from his earlier explorations of Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain and video projects starring Chloë Sevigny, through his series of nudes, to the Olivetti Valentine typewriter, Eames bucket rocking chair in his studio and Margiela German Army Trainers on his feet.

His most recent series, Shields, takes this iconography to a place beyond its natural conclusion. The Shields seem at first to be plain sheets of colour, but, as they catch the light, they reveal themselves to be built up of delicate lines of gold- and silver-pigmented permanent marker. Other works of his use this technique to surround and isolate the subjects of photographs – giving them a dazzling aura in a way reminiscent of medieval icons – but in Shields, the aura is all there is. Each one has a photo as a ground, but we cannot tell what that photo is, and nor should we be able to here. There is a sense of mystery but also of transcendence. Bradley’s Shields are a palimpsest onto which we can project our own meditations. Indeed, they served as a visual focal point for Kundalini yoga workshops in his show “The Secret Key” at Venice’s Zuecca Project Space.

His studio has the same sense of hidden mystery as his Shields. Designed by Studio Miessen, his white-walled workspace hides experiments in technique, works in progress, pieces of inspiration and a mini-kitchen behind flush doors and movable walls. At the far end of the U-shaped space is a pair of works after Hieronymus Bosch’s Ascent of the Blessed. Bradley turns this image into a diptych. One, with a gold background, hangs on the wall, and the other, with a black background, is propped upside-down on the floor. One shows a descent and the other an ascent: but as the viewer’s eye is encouraged to trace an infinity symbol around the oculi of the two paintings, they become halves of a whole, a cycle of being.

A devotion to the power of symbols gives him optimism: “Saturn is in Sagittarius – 2017 will be the year when spirituality comes back to art.” For Slater Bradley, however, spirituality and art are already inextricably linked on the path to transcendence.

Read less

Slater Bradley

The Secret Key: Invitation, 2016 | Zuecca Project Space, Venice, Italy | © Slater B. Bradley | Courtesy of Slater Bradley Studio, Berlin

Slater Bradley Studio | Architecture and spatial design: Studio Miessen | Photo: Enrich Duch

3rd Wave Solar Shield, 2015 | next to Jon Rafman | Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens, 2016 | curated by Johannes Fricke Waldthausen / Goodroom | Sprüth Magers, Berlin

3rd Wave Solar Shield, 2015 | Dreaming Mirrors Dreaming Screens, 2016 | curated by Johannes Fricke Waldthausen / Goodroom | Sprüth Magers, Berlin

Slater Bradley Studio | Architecture and spatial design: Studio Miessen | Photo: Enrich Duch

The Secret Key, 2016 | Zuecca Project Space, Venice, Italy | Artwork: © Slater B. Bradley | Courtesy of Slater Bradley Studio, Berlin and Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon | Photo: Zuecca Project Space, Venice, Italy

The Secret Key: Kundalini Yoga with Che Ahlers, 2016 | Zuecca Project Space, Venice, Italy | Artwork: © Slater B. Bradley | Courtesy of Slater Bradley Studio, Berlin and Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon | Photo: Slater Bradley Studio

The Secret Key: Installation view, 2016 | Zuecca Project Space, Venice, Italy | Artwork: © Slater B. Bradley | Courtesy of Slater Bradley Studio, Berlin and Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon | Photo: Slater Bradley Studio