Bradley Harms: so fast, so still

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Bradley Harms, "Family Treehouse," 2019

acrylic on canvas, 48" x 36"

Bradley Harms: So Fast, So Still

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 12th, 5 – 8 pm.

Exhibition Dates: September 5 – October 3, 2019

Gallery Jones is pleased to present So Fast, So Still, a solo exhibition of artwork by Bradley Harms. In this new series of abstract paintings, the technical precision and rigour that characterizes Harms’ aesthetic is paired with free gestural expression in anintriguing process that demands a second look.

Though the brightly colourful acrylic works seem more thoughtful than playful, they radiate with energy from within. By emphasizing both freedom and formality, gesture and outline, they can be read as a contemplative antidote to “speed culture”—so fast, and so still.

The diverse works in the exhibition stem from a single point of artistic research. With an inquisitive and critical eye, Harms researches older models of abstract painting to create something entirely new. Gestural, explosive arcs and drags of colour point to the bravado of early Abstract Expressionists, yet a process of carefully crafted cut-outs, like Henri Matisse in his late career, focus the viewer’s gaze to specific sections. Throughout the series, Harms uses dots, lines and layers of acrylic as “screens” to create a way of seeing that the artist calls “Prescriptive Abstraction”—leading the viewer’s eye by bringing forward certain objects and letting others recede.

Rooted historically and in Canadian contemporary abstract work, Harms pushes to advance the form while situating it in a specific social context. His deliberate pairing of quick, intuitive expression with the slow, practiced skill of technical lines comments on technology without using any—foregrounding the value of artistic craftsmanship in a digitally-saturated landscape. Harms insists that “Painting is the original Photoshop”, and with an informed eye, puts abstraction back in the centre of our focus.

Born in 1970 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Bradley Harms received his BFA from the University of Calgary in 1996 and his Masters of Fine Arts from the prestigious School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. Harms has exhibited extensively throughout Canada and on the international stage, including Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Miami, Munich, Sydney, Singapore, and Tokyo. He has been collected by such institutions as BMO, the Canada Council Art Bank, Denton’s LLP, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Scotiabank, Oxford Properties, and the Tama Art Museum, Tokyo. He lives and works in Vancouver, Calgary, and Los Angeles.