Petzel is pleased to present Bhoga Marga, an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Joe Bradley, on view from March 3rd to April 30th at the gallery’s Chelsea location. The show marks the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first in six years in New York City.

The new paintings included in Bhoga Marga channel an evolved vivacity within Bradley’s multifaceted approach to abstraction that both defies and embraces any singular implication of an identifiable visual language. As a result of this eschewing of specificity, it is a clear dedication to and care for material that unifies Bradley’s paintings, as well as his ceaseless ability to keep his viewers on their toes. Bradley’s paintings emanate a physicality that speaks not only to the importance of artistic authorship and process within his practice, but also to the raw commitment to the pure act of artmaking that lies at the very heart of his oeuvre. It is this rawness that allows Bradley’s work to speak for itself, each work manifested into brilliant explorations of shape and color that do not need to fit neatly into a legible genre.

Also on view is a selection of new drawings by the artist. If Bradley’s paintings are a conversation between process and the push and pull of materiality, his drawings can alternately be understood as immediate modes of gesture that bask in their state of simplicity. Taking much of his inspiration from cartoons and comics, Bradley’s drawings are at once humorous and insightful, giving the viewer just enough of a glimpse into the inner workings of his psyche without attempting to provide narrative or context. At their essence, the drawings are direct in both forethought and execution, and give way to the intimate experience that takes place when an artist puts something as humble and honest as charcoal or pencil to a blank, unprimed sheet of paper.

Joe Bradley was born 1975 in Kittery, ME, US, and currently lives and works in New York. The artist had his first gallery exhibition in New York after earning his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1999. It was just three years later that he had his first solo museum show at MoMA PS1. Bradley has been the subject of solo exhibitions at museums including Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, US (2017); Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, US (2017); Bozar / Center of Fine Arts, Brussels, BE (2017); and Le Consortium, Dijon, FR (2014). Major institutional group exhibitions include Joe Bradley, Oscar Tuazon, Michael Williams, The Brant Foundation Art Study Center, Greenwich, CT, US (2018); New York Painting, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn, DE (2015); The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, curated by Laura Hoptman, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, US (2014); and EXPO 1: NEW YORK, curated by Klaus Biesenbach, MoMA PS1, Long Island, NY, US (2013). Bradley’s work was also included in the Whitney Biennial 2008, curated by Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin, and overseen by Donna De Salvo, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, US (2008).