Bradley Harms – “Maximalism and the New Simplicity”

Newzones is pleased to announce Bradley Harms’ solo exhibition, “Maximalism and the New Simplicity” which will open to view from September 18 – October 23. The opening reception will be held Saturday, September 25 from 1-4 pm.

Of this new body of work, Harms states:

“As I pay close attention to the material aspects of painting, my work certainly exudes a sense of technological awareness. These paintings are contemporary objects with seams and edges that are confident and exacted. The surfaces, painted with mechanical conviction, undoubtedly borrow from the tropes of digital art and, though I enjoy the mimicry, I eschew machine techniques by hand applying the delicately modulated lines; trumping the manufactured aesthetic with the hand made.

The precision of the lines, themselves, hints at technology, where the gesture repeated forms elaborate and complex systems, flipping between surface assertion and spatial invitation. In “Maximalism and the New Simplicity”, these accumulations hint at endlessness, as they exceed the viewers visual awareness; a contemplation of modernism is transferred into a more frighteningly contemporary construct. Unlike the modernist impulse, they are not intended to be reductive but additive in nature, subsequently allowing for a field of discourse that is open-ended and reflective of our techno-driven ability to process vast amounts of information….”

Born in 1971, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Bradley Harms received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary in 1996 and his Masters of Fine Arts from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited through North America and Europe. His work can be found in many international public collections such as the Canada Council’s Artbank (Ottawa, ON), Alberta Foundation for the Arts (Edmonton, AB), the Nickle Arts Museum (Calgary, AB), University of Western Sydney (Sydney, Australia) and Tama Art University (Tokyo,  Japan).