Although Peter Bradley is best known for his pioneering Color Field paintings, sculpture has always been integral to his practice. For the 2023 edition of ADAA, Karma will present a selection of Bradley’s abstract sculptures made from salvaged metals and recent paintings from a never-before-exhibited body of work the artist has developed over the past two years.

In the early 1970s, Bradley, using new technology in acrylic gel paints and a spray gun, developed a style of painting devoid of his own hand in which splashes of color layer into compositions reminiscent of far-away galaxies. A pivotal early encounter with Alexander Calder and his work initially inspired Bradley to move his investigations of dynamism and suspension into the realm of three dimensions. His sculptures are also in conversation with those of Anthony Caro, whose abstract metal compositions Bradley included in The De Luxe Show, a 1971 group exhibition curated by the artist that has assumed legendary status as the first racially integrated art show in the United States. In 1985, Bradley traveled to South Africa to participate in the first-ever Thupelo Workshop. Facing limited access to acrylic paint in the region, the artist worked exclusively in sculpture while there. A staunch commitment to the numerous possibilities of nonrepresentational art runs through Bradley’s entire oeuvre, which now spans over five decades, connecting these twentieth-century sculptures to the work on display at ADAA.

Two of the sculptures on view here take off from the theme of flight: Albatross (2022) transforms crumpled and perforated pieces of unpainted stainless steel into an abstract, floor-bound work that looks as if it is spreading its wings, while Flying (2023) sets found, colorful steel forms, including a maroon seat taken from a farming tractor in upstate New York, where Bradley now lives, in relation such that they seemingly defy gravity. Tonka (2022) furthers the artist’s play with elements of vehicular machinery. A namesake plastic truck in Tonka-yellow merges into a steel plate in the same hue, vibrating in contrast with planes of tangerine-orange metal that elevate the work off of the floor.

Bradley’s paintings similarly explore the interaction of color and motion. Pigments soak and stain the surfaces, and atomized and flung skeins and spots of acrylic hurry across the picture plane, indicative of the artist’s layered process. The paintings presented here contrast aqueous flows of diaphanous color with hardened pools and pucks of acrylic that cause the underlying canvas to buckle and furrow. The sprays of yellow atop a mottled violet field in Spooky Purple (2023) evoke spirit orbs, while the hues in Foxly (2023) bleed into each other, feathering at the edges. With these new works, Bradley marches forward into novel realms of material, color, and form.