Faceless figures swim together in a big universal pool, walk toward a giant yellow moon and drift across evening skies in Katherine Bradford’s dreamlike paintings.
The American artist’s first solo exhibition in Korea, “Living a Dream,” brings around 20 recent works to Gallery Hyundai through July 12.
The exhibition introduces Bradford’s distinctive visual language shaped by recurring motifs such as mothers, superheroes and figures in water.
Notable featured works include “Mothers Group,” “Sleep and Pool Swimmer” and “Greeting the Sun,” each of which offers a glimpse into Bradford’s distinctive world, where whimsy and melancholy, intimacy and solitude coexist.
Born in New York in 1942, Bradford entered the art world later than many of her peers, pursuing painting seriously after raising a family in Maine. Bradford has since built a distinctive body of work centered on vulnerability and emotional experience.
“While Bradford’s figures appear connected to one another, they are also marked by a fundamental solitude,” Gallery Hyundai wrote in the exhibition text.
“Through these figures, the artist captures the complex emotional layers of human experience.”
Working in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, before its rise as an art hub, she developed a distinctive style that bridged abstraction and representation, drawing inspiration from artists including Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler, Philip Guston and Mark Rothko.
Her work has gained increasing international recognition since the 2000s, particularly after the Portland Museum of Art's 2022 exhibition "Flying Woman: The Paintings of Katherine Bradford," which helped cement her reputation as a significant voice in contemporary painting.
yunapark@heraldcorp.com
