Bradley Harms | Upward Spiral

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Bradley Harms, “Rond (Cobalt) 2,” 2024

acrylic on canvas wrapped panel, 24 x 20 inches (courtesy of the gallery)

Opening Reception: Saturday, Oct. 19th, 2-4pm

Newzones is thrilled to announce a solo exhibition of new work, Upward Spiral, by Canadian abstract painter, Bradley Harms.

The notion of (im)purity is a significant aspect of Bradley Harms’ work. Analyzing how complexity emerges from simple procedures, his paintings are rooted in the reductivist purity that modernists strive to achieve, such as the Grid and the Monochrome which were benchmarks of modernist tendencies. However, Harms’ paintings differ significantly because they are applied freehand, acknowledging both the artwork and artist’s imperfect nature. This instills the work with a sense of personality or humanity, making them almost defiant in their imperfection.

Upward Spiral brings together multiple series – such as the new Rönd series and the ongoing Tabletop series – which may seem vastly different upon first glance, but are related through Harms’ manipulation of paint in a delicate dance of flow and control. They are a volley between method and imagination, structure and illusion. The Rönd series is a modular system of paintings designed to be displayed in any number of configurations, informed by the space it occupies. Based in pure abstraction, the individual works are comprised on a single expressive colour background and covered with thousands of hand-painted individual lines. The exuberant, colour-driven quality of this work is unmistakable and expressive individual marks are hand applied with an almost compulsive repetition. The Tabletop series is a playground of ideas that inform future paintings. The pieces begin with no rules, and eventually become appendices to other paintings and series. This becomes particularly apparent when exhibited alongside other series of work, as it is in Upward Spiral.

Ultimately, Harms’ paintings are dichotomies: the idea of purity versus the human notion of imperfection. They are both an acknowledgment and a critique of the history of abstract painting -playful in a very serious way

Bradley Harms received his BFA from the University of Calgary and his Masters of Fine Arts from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Harms has exhibited extensively throughout Canada, as well as on the international stage, including Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Miami, Munich, Sydney, Singapore, and Tokyo. Additionally, his artwork has been exhibited throughout North America and Europe, and can be found in many public collections such as the Canada Council’s Art Bank (Ottawa, ON), Alberta Foundation for the Arts (Edmonton, AB), the Nickle Arts Museum (Calgary, AB), University of Western Sydney (Sydney, Australia), Foreign Affairs + International Trade Canada (Ottawa, ON) and Glenbow Museum (Calgary, AB), to name a few.