Bradley Harms | I Can See My House From Here

I Can See My House From Here, 2017, Hand applied acrylic on linen, 36 x 48"

Winsor Gallery is pleased to announce the third 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 – L.A, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Miami, Munich, Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo. The exhibition entitled I Can See My House From Here runs from September 21st – October 28th. An opening reception will be held on the evening of Thursday September 21st, from 6-8pm; Bradley Harms will be in attendance.

For the past number of years, Bradley Harms has taken a leading role in a new and forward-looking wave of Canadian abstraction. He has built upon traditions within the medium, whilst also creating work that reflects and critiques contemporary social and technological developments. Harms' work addresses the manner in which we perceive painting: manipulating the ideas of surface, form, and our notion of perfection. The paintings, in "I Can See My House From Here", stem from an impulse to deviate from the formal qualities in other veins of my practice. While not directly attached to the procedural rigour embedded in other parts of my painting, these works employ some of their qualities, but are further allowed the freedom of impulse and improvisation. Free of from, these new light-driven abstractions come from observations of trends within contemporary abstraction and become the “other” to what has quite frankly, become a safe and self reflexive environment.

A b o u t    B r a d l e y    H a r m s

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.

His work is included in such notable collections as: the Canada Council’s Artbank (Ottawa, ON), The Senvest Collection of New Canadian Art (Montreal, QC), Alberta Foundation for the Arts (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) and Tama Art University (Tokyo, Japan).

About his work he writes
As I pay close attention to the material aspects of painting, my work certainly exudes a sense of technological awareness. These paintings are contemporary objects with seams and edges that are confident and exacted. The surfaces, painted with mechanical conviction, undoubtedly borrow from the tropes of digital art and, though I enjoy the mimicry, I eschew machine techniques by hand applying the delicately modulated lines; trumping the manufactured aesthetic with the hand made.

The precision of the lines, themselves, hints at technology, where the gesture repeated forms elaborate and complex systems, flipping between surface assertion and spatial invitation. These accumulations hint at endlessness, as they exceed the viewer’s visual awareness; a contemplation of modernism is transferred into a more frighteningly contemporary construct. Unlike the modernist impulse, they are not intended to be reductive but additive in nature, subsequently allowing for a field of discourse that is open-ended and reflective of our techno-driven ability to process vast amounts of information: The simple relationships of very complex systems.

What can be certain is that the work employs a hybridization of style. It dismantles abstraction, reconfiguring it in order to create a viable and forward-looking syntax that reflects current social and technological developments without simply mirroring them. These are perfectionist paintings that extol imperfect formal and social realms. I craft paintings that are slick 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 feel a responsibility to continue parsing painting’s language; its authority, history, and affiliations. And besides, I find problems more stimulating than presupposed solutions.