Brad Tucker
Brad Tucker creates happy accidents with groups of one-off silkscreens. He keeps the number of component parts uncharacteristically small in his series: each print is an arrangement of two, occasionally three, overlapping shapes, and each shape has at least one scalloped edge. But within those tight constraints, Tucker is playing a subtle game with countless permutations. He cuts his shapes from window screen, and then exposes them onto silkscreen. The resulting color fields have a texture that, when superimposed, create delicate moirés: plaid-like patterns produced from the two grids being slightly offset. As an additional complication, Tucker selectively floods his screens with ink, so that certain areas will tend to smear and print darker. It’s a display of technical finesse whose end result is immediately accessible; the bright threads of color and soft shadows feel as much like serendipitous discoveries as triumphs of expertise.
In his sculptural work, Tucker "showcases" the relationships between objects, bodies and spaces, as well as between expectations and realities. Forms and materials clash: a trumpet and a neon sign are meticulously carved in wood. Moreover, sculpture functions as drawing: oversized cross- hatches, dotted-lines, and words fill the empty page of the gallery. Tucker’s erected borders …
Brad Tucker creates happy accidents with groups of one-off silkscreens. He keeps the number of component parts uncharacteristically small in his series: each print is an arrangement of two, occasionally three, overlapping shapes, and each shape has at least one scalloped edge. But within those tight constraints, Tucker is playing a subtle game with countless permutations. He cuts his shapes from window screen, and then exposes them onto silkscreen. The resulting color fields have a texture that, when superimposed, create delicate moirés: plaid-like patterns produced from the two grids being slightly offset. As an additional complication, Tucker selectively floods his screens with ink, so that certain areas will tend to smear and print darker. It’s a display of technical finesse whose end result is immediately accessible; the bright threads of color and soft shadows feel as much like serendipitous discoveries as triumphs of expertise.
In his sculptural work, Tucker "showcases" the relationships between objects, bodies and spaces, as well as between expectations and realities. Forms and materials clash: a trumpet and a neon sign are meticulously carved in wood. Moreover, sculpture functions as drawing: oversized cross- hatches, dotted-lines, and words fill the empty page of the gallery. Tucker’s erected borders and boundaries, eliding explicit political connotation, are provisional, fragile, and fragmentary; they are domestic and intimate, if not personal.
From 1999-2000 Tucker was an artist resident at the Core Program, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. Tucker has exhibited and performed internationally for the past fourteen years, including solo exhibitions at Inman Gallery, Houston, Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, The Suburban, Oak Park, IL, and Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York, NY. His recent and notable group exhibitions, include Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta, LA><ART, Los Angeles, CA, Ibid Gallery, London, UK, and Sculpture Center, Long Island City, New York, NY.
Courtesy of Inman Gallery