Ry David Bradley

On view in Der Würfel: Yuri Pattison

Neumeister Bar-Am takes pleasure in presenting the gallery's first solo exhibition of Ry David Bradley, born 1979 in Melbourne, Australia and now living between London and New York. Bradley’s work and writing stems from a thorough investigation into the lineage of painting, specifically the materiality and conceptual relevance of painted artwork in todays age of technological acceleration.

"We affirm that the world’s magnificence has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed."

– Manifesto of Futurism, 1909

Bradley’s new paintings comprise of images of custom performance engines printed on the finest Japanese mesh, appearing almost as a bubble or augmented layer, they are stretched over messily hand painted frames. Each painting is fixed with a USB in the frame, containing a memory of itself and other works – complicating our perception of original, replica, past, present, future.

Realities presents a picture of a seemingly divided ideology by transforming the gallery into a road. Road markings split the space in two lanes disappearing into a tunnel. Yet there are no directions, leaving us to contemplate: Does the tunnel represent the past or future? Are we traveling forward or backward? Are we on the left or the right side of the road? Self drive or driverless?

Accelerating into the abyss, no matter in forward or reverse, one would crash. Could we speculate that the black semicircle represents a false hope of progress? Road to Nowhere resounds subconsciously while reflecting on the current surfaces of technological advance.

Text by Ché Zara Blomfield