I n Mark Bradford’s 2006 composition, Exodus, the modernist grid seems to have strayed from its linear path. The quasi-rectangular forms that emerge in bold outlines across the predominantly red surface gesture towards visual order, but this undergirding framework is visibly skewed.

Throughout some sections, Bradford’s rectilinear shapes veer off their axes into radial patterns, while others are swallowed up by black patches, creating voids within the picture plane. Bradford’s richly textured collage offers a glimmer of insight to its physical makeup—along one edge, the surface gives way to what lies beneath—some revealing fragments of bright color, a snippet of text among the strata of found paper. Bradford’s wary grid provides a sort of Rosetta Stone to his abstract field of representation. He gestures subtly towards maps, aerial views, and visions of a city.

Exodus is a strong example of Bradford’s early phase of multimedia collages. Often large in scale, astutely abstract, and intricately materialized, Bradford’s collages mark his stoic entanglement with the tradition of modernist painting. He even refers to the works as paintings—though critics are quick to point out that there is actually very little paint involved in these complex compositions.

The material that makes up the many layers of Bradford’s work is mostly found or repurposed paper: fragments of billboards rescued from the streets of South Central Los Angeles; found “merchant papers,” as Bradford has coined street flyers and posters that he pulls from construction site barriers and telephone poles; and endpapers—used in styling hair—up-cycled from the salon where Bradford had worked as a hairdresser.

As a Los Angeles native, urbanity, specifically the realities of urban life have informed the very core of his practice both philosophically and aesthetically. Bradford’s artistic arsenal is composed of literal material fragments of urban life and the configurations that result from his distinctive practice. These often allude to the physical makeup of his city, and are seen as an expression of the dense and distinctly metropolitan network of interwoven districts.

These physical materials anchor Bradford’s collages, adding personal, cultural, and geographic elements to the thick accretion atop his canvases. Bradford’s methodology is simultaneously additive and destructive: he builds dense layers of matter only to erode them back. Bradford works quickly and intuitively, while adding and subtracting until he is able to balance the visual and tactile energy of the composition. In the pursuit of this equilibrium, Bradford’s collages evoke both the exhibitionism of Robert Rauschenberg’s works combined with the oppression of Gerhard Richter’s 1990’s era abstractions. Bradford’s dialogue with the material culture and economic realities of his community, aligned with schema of 20th century painting, forge a new chapter within the art historical canon. Bradford codifies the precarious balance of the personal and the universal, which informs the ever-vacillating identity of urbanites.

《出 埃及記》是馬克．布拉福德的 2006 年作品，畫面上一行行充滿現代主義風格的網格看似偏離了其直線路徑。在這幅以紅色為主調的作品中，一個個近似長方形的條狀以粗體輪廓呈現；它們似是藝術家所建構的視覺秩序，但作品中的基礎框架卻又明顯傾斜。

在作品的部分位置，直線形狀偏離其軸，形成類似放射狀的圖案，而其他形狀則被填滿黑色，在畫面留下一個個空洞的痕跡。其中一個邊緣露出底層的亮色碎片、層層現成紙品中出現一段文字，揭露了作品經多層拼貼，質感紋理豐富。布拉福德謹慎鋪排的網格就如羅塞塔石碑一樣，為抽象的面目提供了一種解讀，呈現出地圖、鳥瞰圖和城市景觀的景象。

《出埃及記》是布拉福德早期多媒材拼貼作品的代表作。一般來說，他的拼貼作品尺幅宏大、抽象卻又充滿複雜的具體細節，從中可見他與現代主義繪畫傳統難以一言釐清的關係。他甚至將自己的作品稱為畫；不過，評論家很快指出這些複雜的作品實際上很少涉及顏料的運用。

在這些多層次的拼貼作品中，布拉福德使用的素材主要是現成或回收再造的紙張，例如是在南洛杉磯街頭撿拾的廣告牌紙張碎片；在地盤的屏障和電線桿上收集得來、布拉福德稱之為「商業海報」的街頭傳單和招貼，以及用於髮型設計的襯紙（布拉福德曾任美髮師，發現髮廊的襯紙也能改造成創作媒材） 。

布拉福德是土生土長的洛杉磯人，城市生活——更明確來說是在城市生活所面對的真實境況，從哲學和美學層面上都對他的創作帶來了深刻影響。他在作品中融入來自城市生活的真實碎片，配合以獨特手法施展的佈局，往往畫出洛杉磯的地貌景觀，展現出各個地區交織而成的密集大都市網絡。

種種物料支撐起布拉福德的拼貼畫，為畫布上的積疊注入個人、文化和地理元素。這位藝術家的創作手法包括添加和拆除的工序：他會將材料層層拼貼，然後磨蝕它們，從而堆疊出具有豐富層次的作品。布拉福德憑直覺快速地創作，過程中不斷加加減減，直到作品中的視覺和觸覺效果取得平衡。這個過程令人想到羅伯特．勞森伯格（Robert Rauschenberg）作品的表現性和格哈德．里希特（Gerhard Richter）在 1990 年代創作的抽象作品所流露的壓迫感。布拉福德與他所在社區的物質文化和經濟狀況對話；他注意到個人與共同體之間的失衡致使都市人身份意識浮動不定，並藉作品表達這種迷茫模糊，一如二十世紀繪畫傳統般反映社會現況，同時為藝術史開闢新的篇章。