Hall 5 [21-22]

While the ground floor’s halls of the HALLE FÜR KUNST mainly feature bright, luminous paintings that radiate a certain positivity, the works shown in the basement represent a darker side of her practice, which evoke states such as loss, isolation and loneliness. Katherine Bradford’s phantastic worlds nearly divide diametrically into colorful, luminous and darker, less saturated paintings, which deal with loss, isolation and loneliness. Where the bright, multicolored and optimistic paintings could be understood as a surface metaphor for consciousness, these darker, melancholic paintings perhaps represent the unconscious: hidden fears, longings and unprocessed emotions.
The works presented on the lower floor adopt a smaller format and therefore contrast with the monumentality of the works on the ground floor. However, Bradford’s style remains unmistakable. Due to their persistent character of ambiguity and variability, her paintings often seem like fragmented memories or dreamscapes, evoking both hope and uncanny discomfort. Her oeuvres, which she creates out of the process of painting, imagination and memory, thus function to a certain extent as a visualization of the unconscious; as a bringing forth of her dreams and longings into consciousness.
Swim Team Outer Space (2015) [21] is one of Bradford’s night paintings, in which a group of swimmers take a night-time dip in front of an oversized moon reflected in pinkish-violet water. In this painting, Bradford takes up two central motifs: one is the water theme, which she repeatedly uses to represent her reflections on color in relation to community, groups and individuals as well as their interactions and relationships. A second motif is the sense of otherworldliness: moon-bathing seems like an odyssey on another planet in this universe. The color scheme of Swim Team Outer Space is also reminiscent of the universe, so that the extraterrestrial-looking moon-bathing of Bradford’s characteristically indeterminable figurines recalls pop-cultural references such as David Bowie’s Space Oddity, literary works like Douglas Adam’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Marvel Comics.
Similarly, in Magenta Free (2021) [22], Bradford’s figures stage ambiguous narratives. Despite their seemingly simple arrangements, it’s possible to suggest that there is more going on than first meets the eye.
 

[21]
Swim Team Outer Space, 2015
Acrylic on canvas
101,6 x 76,2 cm
Courtesy Carole Server & Oliver Frankel, New York
 

[22]
Magenta Free, 2021
Acrylic on canvas
121,9 x 91,4 cm
Courtesy Private Collection, New York