Karma is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Peter Bradley. The exhibition will take place at 22 East 2nd Street.

Peter Bradley’s first solo show in New York was at André Emmerich Gallery in 1972, establishing his work alongside pioneers such as Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, and Kenneth Noland. Bradley’s practice was enriched by his roles as an associate gallery director and curator, including organizing the landmark De Luxe Show in 1971, which was among the first racially integrated exhibitions of contemporary artists in the United States. Bradley was an early adoptee of acrylic gel paint, a new material in the 1960s, and developed an influential approach to the act of painting that expanded the possibilities of the medium. Emotive and colorful, his canvases are animated by contrasts in material density, spotlighting the alchemical properties of paint.

On view are nine recent paintings that depart from the thick impasto textures of Bradley’s early work. They contain an aqueous sense of space and dimension through his experimentation with a wet canvas technique. Bradley pours his colors directly onto damp unstretched canvases that are often laid on the ground outside, changing the adherence of the medium. The result embraces unpredictability, yielding blooms of color that land and expand on a wet surface. Airy washes of color recede when paired with hard-edges of unthinned acrylic, while elements such as sand and glass add an earthly texture, interrupting vivid atmospheric gradients.

Bradley’s paintings are titled associatively: their color and texture combinations often evoke a feeling, sound, or subject. Coravilas (2021), titled after a tune by Bill Evans, presents smooth planar sweeps of bright pastel color, visually characterizing the jazz master’s fresh Modal approach. Sprinkles of cobalt conjure the pianist’s hand moving over the steady chords of smooth mauve, yolk, and ivory. Titled after Dizzy Gillespie’s jazz standard, Salt Peanuts (2021) captures the radicality of bebop with hunks of gel medium floating over a frenetic white and blue cloudscape. Catch it Willie (2015), alluding to Willie May’s notable baseball catch in 1954, features an explosion of green, yellow, and robin’s egg blue energetically splattered across a central deep purple stain—an impact site, embracing the immediate ecstasy of the moment.

To Bradley, the act of painting is innate. Past and future are muted by the vicissitudes of the present, in which paint is liberated. Color becomes energy, raw and irresistible, like music. 

Bradley’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dallas Art Museum, Dallas, The Menil Collection, Houston,   African American Museum, Dallas; African American Museum, Los Angeles; Fogg Museum, Boston; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham; Aldrich Museum, Ridgewood, Connecticut; Hayward Museum, Hayward, California; University of Sydney, Sydney; Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton; University of California, Berkeley; Dayton Art Institute, Dayton, Ohio; Johannesburg Art Foundation, South Africa; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina; The Rennie Collection, Vancouver; and the Stamford Museum and Nature Center, Stamford, Connecticut, among others.