Mark Bradford in "Paradox" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

MARK BRADFORD: You know what? Let’s just put it up. SPEAKER: Then we adjust it later. BRADFORD: Yeah, and if it’s a problem, all your fault. (LAUGHS) Never on me. (LAUGHS) SPEAKER: How do you do this because these were advertisements? BRADFORD: Yeah, on the fences.

BRADFORD: I only take the advertisements that have to do businesses. After the riot, so many buildings were burnt down that they put this fencing around it and so everybody starts to use the fencing for these signs. But you see the same things all the time in the ghetto. Cash. For your houses. It’s like cash, we buy your houses.

I like this one. Immigration papers in 30 days. How is this possible? Locks for hair. Black people and hair. I take twine, you know, string, glue, all down around it and then I take the billboard paper and I turn it on the back side, not the good side, but the back side. I lay it on and let it dry and it like...and then I sand it.

And some, I don’t, you can’t...the language is all gone, a little bit gone, sometimes it works better. Just...yeah, it’s just information in the city. You see it all the time. Found some...oh that’s nice. Uh-huh. A head. Put that over there. My practice is both collage and décollage at the same time. How would that look?

Décollage. I take it away, and then collage I immediately add it right back. Sometimes you have to not put stuff on top. You got to retrieve something that’s under the bottom.

Good. Where’s that S? I saved it. Make sure the color is right. The line of my making or my art practice goes back to my childhood, but it’s not an art background, it’s a making background. Me making the sign of the prices in my mother’s hair salon, I was in charge of that so I would do calligraphy.