![WORKING PRACTICE
Live
Souls
Slater Bradleys art takes on fandom, from the inside.
by Marina Cashdan
Stroszeks Last
Stand, 2009.
Oil and palladium
leaf on linen,
12 x 12 in.
through video, photography, and, more recently, painting, Joy Division, whose brief existence ended in 1980 with the suicide
artist Slater Bradley explores such everlasting themes as mortality, of its lead singer, Ian Curtis.
immortality, and reincarnation, all in the context of an Internet- Bradleys infatuation with Joy Division began concurrently
savvy era. In addressing these topics, he uses popular music, in with his interest in art. I had sfmoma [San Francisco Museum
part, as a springboard, tapping into fan culture, revealing truths of Modern Art] in my backyard, says the Bay Areaborn New
about passionate groupies and their collective unconscious, as well Yorker. I would spend all my time there studying Clyfford Still
as about the industry that fuels them. In last winters if we were paintings, Rothko paintings. I was really into Abstract Expression-
immortal, his sixth show at Team Gallery, in New York, and in ism. But at home [I had images of ] statues and cemeteries, mostly
many earlier works, his subject is the post-punk Mancunian band from Joy Division posters, hanging on my bedroom walls. Brad-
32 Modern Painters MARCH 2010 www.ARtinfo.CoM](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/wpslaterbradley034mp0310-100404182408-phpapp02/85/Working-Practice-Slater-Bradley-Modern-Painters-March-2010-1-320.jpg)
![ley, who is 34 and boyish-looking, with shoulder-length sandy blond hair and warm gray eyes,
typically wears all black: clunky combat boots, eccentric pants from niche designers, and, this win-
ter, a black shearling aviator hat. Initially, he can come across as moody and sullen, but speaking
with him you quickly learn that hes genuine and sensitive. He has an idealistic, if not romantic,
notion of the artists role, defining his practice as the attempt to reach a goal beyond mere dollars,
although hes quick to acknowledge that dollars make art possible.
Bradley graduated in 1998 from University of California, Los Angeles, where he experimented
with all types of mediums but ultimately gravitated to video art. Everybody has painted for all this
time. At least with video, theres a limited history, he says. It only goes back as far as Nam June
Paik1960 basicallyso youve got a shorter history. And technology is always advancing, so you
have more to experiment with. He moved to New York upon graduation and took a compilation
tape of his video works to various New York galleries. After seeing video artist Maria Marshalls
exhibition When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, at Team Gallery, he introduced himself
to Teams founder and director, Jose Freire. Less than two months later, Freire offered him a solo
show. I got lucky, Bradley says. And now Ive worked with Jose for 10 years.
His video series The Doppelg辰nger Trilogy (200104),
which debuted at Blum & Poe gallery, in Los Angeles, in
2004 and then was acquired by the Guggenheim Museum,
garnered the artist a lot of attention early in his career. In it
the actor Benjamin Brockwho looks something like Brad-
leyplays the artist enacting imagined live performances by
Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, and Michael Jackson. For Brad-
ley, the doppelg辰nger is an intermediary, a ghost broker of
time and space, that allows him to access the immortality
of the ill-fated stars. In the era before the pervasiveness of
YouTube, Bradleys pieces tapped into a rich vein for video
art. The work was about the [as-yet-undiscovered] space of
YouTube. [These figures] were the perfect tragic myths, ones
that break the status quo, and I sought to locate that influ-
ence over the past decade in reconstructing forgotten, lost,
and phantom performances and ephemera, says Bradley,
who feels his Trilogy was a harbinger of YouTube culture.
Although he believes YouTube is a valuable tool for amateur
archaeology, he regrets that it has changed the way we value
information and discovery. The barrel of history is now not
a barrel at all; its an event horizon, he says. You used to
have to dig to find a record or book of an obscure artist
you loved. Now the physicality of the long, lucky search has
ABOVE: Stills from Factory Archives, 200102. Single-channel video
been replaced by guaranteed one-step digital transmission.
with sound, 3 min., 38 sec. RIGHT: Stills from Phantom Release, 2003. Joy Division emerged in the wake of the raw, raging sounds
Single-channel video with sound, 8 min., 30 sec. BELOW: Stills from
Recorded Yesterday, 2004. Silent single-channel video, 40 min., 57 sec. of the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and the Clash. The band
The three videos make up The Doppelg辰nger Trilogy. inspired successive waves of worshipers attracted to its dark,
moody sound and youthful energyand to Curtis, whose spastic moves (chicken dancing, Bradley
calls them, linking them to the final image of Werner Herzogs 1977 film Strozsek) and poetic lyrics
about love, death, and personal torment resonated with a generation of U.K. youth who felt disen-
franchised and dissatisfied in the countrys residual class system. Joy Divisions album designs, de-
vised by Factory Records creative director
Peter Saville, one of the music industrys
ALL IMAGES, TEAM GALLERY, NEW YORK. OPPOSITE, TEAM GALLERY
greatest image makers, also introduced
fans to fine art by appropriating histori-
cal works and recontextualizing them
in pop culture. Ralph Gibsons eerie 1969
photograph Hand Through Doorway (also
known as Enchanted Hand), for example,
was printed on the inner sleeve of Joy Di-
visions debut album, Unknown Pleasures
(1979), which, with its cover picture of
pulses from a pulsar reading, became just as
iconic visually as it did acoustically.
Modern Painters MARCH 2010 www.ARtinfo.CoM 33](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/wpslaterbradley034mp0310-100404182408-phpapp02/85/Working-Practice-Slater-Bradley-Modern-Painters-March-2010-2-320.jpg)
Working Practice: Slater Bradley, Modern Painters March 2010
- 1. WORKING PRACTICE Live Souls Slater Bradleys art takes on fandom, from the inside. by Marina Cashdan Stroszeks Last Stand, 2009. Oil and palladium leaf on linen, 12 x 12 in. through video, photography, and, more recently, painting, Joy Division, whose brief existence ended in 1980 with the suicide artist Slater Bradley explores such everlasting themes as mortality, of its lead singer, Ian Curtis. immortality, and reincarnation, all in the context of an Internet- Bradleys infatuation with Joy Division began concurrently savvy era. In addressing these topics, he uses popular music, in with his interest in art. I had sfmoma [San Francisco Museum part, as a springboard, tapping into fan culture, revealing truths of Modern Art] in my backyard, says the Bay Areaborn New about passionate groupies and their collective unconscious, as well Yorker. I would spend all my time there studying Clyfford Still as about the industry that fuels them. In last winters if we were paintings, Rothko paintings. I was really into Abstract Expression- immortal, his sixth show at Team Gallery, in New York, and in ism. But at home [I had images of ] statues and cemeteries, mostly many earlier works, his subject is the post-punk Mancunian band from Joy Division posters, hanging on my bedroom walls. Brad- 32 Modern Painters MARCH 2010 www.ARtinfo.CoM
- 2. ley, who is 34 and boyish-looking, with shoulder-length sandy blond hair and warm gray eyes, typically wears all black: clunky combat boots, eccentric pants from niche designers, and, this win- ter, a black shearling aviator hat. Initially, he can come across as moody and sullen, but speaking with him you quickly learn that hes genuine and sensitive. He has an idealistic, if not romantic, notion of the artists role, defining his practice as the attempt to reach a goal beyond mere dollars, although hes quick to acknowledge that dollars make art possible. Bradley graduated in 1998 from University of California, Los Angeles, where he experimented with all types of mediums but ultimately gravitated to video art. Everybody has painted for all this time. At least with video, theres a limited history, he says. It only goes back as far as Nam June Paik1960 basicallyso youve got a shorter history. And technology is always advancing, so you have more to experiment with. He moved to New York upon graduation and took a compilation tape of his video works to various New York galleries. After seeing video artist Maria Marshalls exhibition When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Cooker, at Team Gallery, he introduced himself to Teams founder and director, Jose Freire. Less than two months later, Freire offered him a solo show. I got lucky, Bradley says. And now Ive worked with Jose for 10 years. His video series The Doppelg辰nger Trilogy (200104), which debuted at Blum & Poe gallery, in Los Angeles, in 2004 and then was acquired by the Guggenheim Museum, garnered the artist a lot of attention early in his career. In it the actor Benjamin Brockwho looks something like Brad- leyplays the artist enacting imagined live performances by Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, and Michael Jackson. For Brad- ley, the doppelg辰nger is an intermediary, a ghost broker of time and space, that allows him to access the immortality of the ill-fated stars. In the era before the pervasiveness of YouTube, Bradleys pieces tapped into a rich vein for video art. The work was about the [as-yet-undiscovered] space of YouTube. [These figures] were the perfect tragic myths, ones that break the status quo, and I sought to locate that influ- ence over the past decade in reconstructing forgotten, lost, and phantom performances and ephemera, says Bradley, who feels his Trilogy was a harbinger of YouTube culture. Although he believes YouTube is a valuable tool for amateur archaeology, he regrets that it has changed the way we value information and discovery. The barrel of history is now not a barrel at all; its an event horizon, he says. You used to have to dig to find a record or book of an obscure artist you loved. Now the physicality of the long, lucky search has ABOVE: Stills from Factory Archives, 200102. Single-channel video been replaced by guaranteed one-step digital transmission. with sound, 3 min., 38 sec. RIGHT: Stills from Phantom Release, 2003. Joy Division emerged in the wake of the raw, raging sounds Single-channel video with sound, 8 min., 30 sec. BELOW: Stills from Recorded Yesterday, 2004. Silent single-channel video, 40 min., 57 sec. of the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and the Clash. The band The three videos make up The Doppelg辰nger Trilogy. inspired successive waves of worshipers attracted to its dark, moody sound and youthful energyand to Curtis, whose spastic moves (chicken dancing, Bradley calls them, linking them to the final image of Werner Herzogs 1977 film Strozsek) and poetic lyrics about love, death, and personal torment resonated with a generation of U.K. youth who felt disen- franchised and dissatisfied in the countrys residual class system. Joy Divisions album designs, de- vised by Factory Records creative director Peter Saville, one of the music industrys ALL IMAGES, TEAM GALLERY, NEW YORK. OPPOSITE, TEAM GALLERY greatest image makers, also introduced fans to fine art by appropriating histori- cal works and recontextualizing them in pop culture. Ralph Gibsons eerie 1969 photograph Hand Through Doorway (also known as Enchanted Hand), for example, was printed on the inner sleeve of Joy Di- visions debut album, Unknown Pleasures (1979), which, with its cover picture of pulses from a pulsar reading, became just as iconic visually as it did acoustically. Modern Painters MARCH 2010 www.ARtinfo.CoM 33
- 3. WORKING PRACTICE ABOVE: Mirrors and Windows, 2009. Oil and moon-gold leaf on linen, 24 x 20 in. RIGHT: Performance stills from the Hate series, 2009. Photographed by Jason Schmidt. Upon Curtiss death, fans attempted to recapture the Joy Division experi- performances (which, like the photographs, were titled Hate) featuring enceand in effect resurrect Curtisby continually producing bootleg al- Brock wearing the coat through New Yorks streets, museums, and gal- bums of unreleased versions of the groups songs. In reincarnating the music, leries, and past newspaper kiosks and even a battalion of nypd officers. CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: TEAM GALLERY; FOUR IMAGES, JASON SCHMIDT they also attempted to re-create Savilles designs. Both the original images, The Joy Division fan bootlegs were made when personal comput- like Gibsons photos, and the fan-constructed ones inspired Bradleys works ers were but a corporate dream, says Bradley, and his works play on the in if we were immortal. In Mirrors and Windows (2009), he replicates Hand obvious paradigm shift in the reception and dissemination of what he Through Doorway in oil and moon-gold leaf on a large canvas. The mono- calls cultural artifacts, legends, and identity. Mirrors and Windows took chromatic painting shows the frail black hand reaching through a nar- months to produce, he adds, reiterating the contrast between artmaking rowly opened door, the geometric shadows offering no sign of a body and the speed of consumption. Appropriating the titles of the uncovered beyond. Unlike the fleeting moment of the photographa single-perspec- bootlegs for his own creationsThe sun aint gonna shine anymore, Dantes tive vision of that single secondthe painting offers a physical space in Inferno, The money will roll right in (all 2009)Bradley comments that which the viewer can explore not only the subject but also the nuances his (and all) artwork, like the rare bootlegs before the Internet age, should of the artists hand. With the help of the designer Haans Nicholas Mott, be valued. There are still many star-crossed stories to dig up and bootlegs Bradley also reproduced the donkey jacket on whose back Curtis Tipp- to be found, so we can look forward for more to comeand more to Exed the word HATE. During the exhibition, Bradley staged clandestine covetfrom Bradley. 34 Modern Painters MARCH 2010 www.ARtinfo.CoM